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Document Details : Title: Kleine genealogie van de ethische beproeving. Subtitle: Deleuze, Bachtin en de geschiedenis van de roman Author(s): KEUNEN, Bart Journal: Spiegel der Letteren Volume: 45 Issue: 3 Date: 2003 Pages: 295-318 DOI: 10.2143/SDL.45.3.504218 Abstract : From a genealogical perspective, the issue of ‘ethics and literature’ is linked up with the history of subjectivisation processes in the Western world. Ethical themes in literature follow the story of breaks (coupures) central to the three-staged historical model of Gilles Deleuze’s Mille Plateaux. Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of ‘the adventure novel of ordeal’ serves to demonstrate the close relations between the literary hero’s ordeals and the watershed events in the civilisation process. The third stage of my genealogical analysis is of the utmost importance because modernity is characterized by a process of decoding of moral values. In modern, capitalist societies, the bond between literature and morality seems ruptured at first sight. Yet, the ethical impulse manages to hold its own by an interiorisation of the ordeal. |
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