Toadstools, Bartleby, and Badiou
This article brings together Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener” with Lives of Jesus authored by David Strauss and Simon Greenleaf and reads them through Alain Badiou’s philosophy of the Event. If we bear in mind the raging debates of the time about how to write an historical account of Jesu...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
|
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Brill
2015
|
| In: |
Religion and the arts
Year: 2015, Volume: 19, Issue: 1/2, Pages: 51-73 |
| Further subjects: | B
Melville
Strauss
Badiou
Bartleby
the Historical Jesus
the Event
|
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) |
| Summary: | This article brings together Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener” with Lives of Jesus authored by David Strauss and Simon Greenleaf and reads them through Alain Badiou’s philosophy of the Event. If we bear in mind the raging debates of the time about how to write an historical account of Jesus, represented here by Strauss and Greenleaf, Melville’s story about a reclusive law-copyist and his frustrated biographer becomes a set of questions about the nature and purpose of biography. When Badiou’s ideas about the Event are taken into account, “Bartleby” intensifies into an anguished consideration of what to do, or what to write, after a life-altering encounter with an elusive subject who leaves no evidentiary trace. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 1568-5292 |
| Contains: | In: Religion and the arts
|
| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1163/15685292-01901003 |