The Writer Writing : Philosophic Acts in Literature.

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In an age of authorless, contextless, deconstructed texts, Francis-Noël Thomas argues that it is time to re-examine a fundamental but neglected concept of literature: writing is an action whose agent is an individual. Addressing both general readers and scholars, Thomas offers two cases, Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan and Marcel Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu, read against the background of the authors' large, eccentric, and surprisingly similar claims about their texts as acts. He examines what happens when we take these claims seriously enough to find out why the authors.

List of Illustrations ; Foreword ; Preface; Acknowledgments ; CHAPTER ONE ; The Writer Writing; CHAPTER TWO ; 'Intentions' and 'Purposes'; Interpretation and Actions; Intention and Historical Interpretation; Purpose and Literary Art; CHAPTER THREE; Parody' or the Imitation of Disciplines; CHAPTER FOUR ; Explanations; ""Scientific"" Explanation; ""Processive"" Explanation; CHAPTER FIVE; Bernard Shaw: Historical Explanation; ""A Frankly Doctrinal Theatre""; G.B.S; G.B.S. in the Theater; G.B.S. as Historian; Saint Joan: The Argument and Function of the Preface; The Scope of the Play.

The Play of Saint Joan: Structure and MechanismThe Epilogue; CHAPTER SIX; Marcel Proust: Psychological Explanation; The Book and the Man; ""Psychology in Space and Time""; The Syllabus of Errors; The Triumph of the Will; The Historical Author, the Narrator, and Their Books; CHAPTER SEVEN; Historical Interpretation: The Face of the Muse and the Baker's Daughter ; Notes; Index.

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