Bataille: Writing the sacred
	Edited by Carolyn Bailey Gill Warwick Studies in European Philosophy

'The essays in this collection provide a valuable introduction to the central questions of Blanchot's writing.'
Allan Stoekl, Pennsylvania State University

Maurice Blanchot is one of the key figures of postwar European thought; he has radically transformed our understanding of the relations between philosophy and literature. His strikingly original fiction and his penetrating critical studies of other writers, such as Kafka, Beckett and Mallarmé, have long been recognized as influential. His oeuvre as a whole, with its connections to the thought of Hegel and Heidegger, Derrida, Levinas, Bataille and Foucault, places him at the forefront of contemporary debates on philosophical and literary culture.

This is the first collection of critical essays on the work of Blanchot in English. It brings together some of the most original commentators on Blanchot from the USA, Great Britain and France; it also includes a letter from Blanchot, published here for the first time, in which he addresses the contentious issue of his politics in the 1930s.

An ideal introduction to Blanchot's life, thought, politics and fiction, this collection will make fascinating reading for students of philosophy, literature and French studies.

Contributors: Simon Critchley, Paul Davies, Christopher Fynsk, Rodolphe Gasché, Leslie Hill, Michael Holland, Roger Laporte, Ian Maclachlan, Jeffrey Mehlman, Michael Newman, Marie-Claire Ropars-Wuilleumier, Gillian Rose, Ann Smock.

The Editor: Carolyn Bailey Gill teaches critical theory at London University. She is the editor of Bataille: Writing the Sacred (Routledge, 1995).