Redeeming Words and the Promise of Happiness

This book offers a philosophical reflection on the nature of language by reading some exemplary works of literature. Drawing on the thought of philosophers—especially Plato, Kant, Hegel, Emerson, Benjamin, Adorno, Heidegger and Wittgenstein, the author argues that language is the bearer of a utopian or messianic promise of happiness, and that by redeeming the revelatory power of words, the two writers in this study are contributing to the redemption of the promise of happiness in a world of reconciled antagonisms and contradictions.

David Kleinberg-Levin is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Northwestern University. He is the author of ten books, most recently Beckett's Words: The Promise of Happiness in a Time of Mourning (Bloomsbury, 2015), Redeeming Words: Language and the Promise of Happiness in the Stories of Döblin and Sebald (SUNY Press, 2013) and Redeeming Words and the Promise of Happiness: A Critical Theory Approach to Wallace Stevens and Vladimir Nabokov (Lexington Books, 2012).

Part I. Between Wild Sense and Plain Sense: The Language of Truth in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens Chapter One: Truth Chapter Two: Reason's Folly Chapter Three: The Realism of the Imagination Chapter Four: Word-Play: Language on Holiday Chapter Five: Redemption? Part II. Facing the Surface: Nabokov After Mallarmé Chapter Six: Modernism Chapter Seven: Mischievous Predecessors Chapter Eight: Transparencies and Metamorphoses: Nabokov's Language Games Chapter Nine: When the Promise of Happiness Appears: Redeeming the Dust on the Surface Chapter Ten: Paradise of Memory and Imagination