Literature and Skepticism

<p><b>Examines the skeptical foundations of literature in order to reassess the status of fiction.</b></p><p><i>Literature and Skepticism</i> links the skeptic attitude to the conditions of possibility in (modern) literature-in particular the narrative form and the essay. Pablo Oyarzun proposes that narrative and the essay document the relationship between literature and skepticism in different but complementary and at the same time complicit ways. As the narrative performance reaches the structural limit of the literary-understood as the domain of fiction-a sort of para-discursive reflection critically accompanies this performance discussing it ironizing it feigning to disbelieve it or overtly belying it. Yet the narrative doubtfully takes distance from itself surrendering all right to a final truth at the very moment at which truth emerges essayistic to the surface. The authors considered-Montaigne Swift Lichtenberg Kleist Kafka and Borges-are eminent representatives of one and the other form and all of the works analyzed are cases of a complex interplay between narrative and essay.</p>