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The ethics of literature, formalists have insisted, resides in the moral quality of a character, a story, perhaps the relation between author and reader. But in the wake of deconstruction and various forms of criticism focusing on difference, the ethical question has been freshly negotiated by literary studies, and to this approach Adam Newton brings a startling new thrust. His book makes a compelling case for understanding narrative as ethics. Assuming an intrinsic and necessary connection between the two, Newton explores the ethical consequences of telling stories and fictionalizing character, and the reciprocal claims binding teller, listener, witness, and reader in the process. He treats these relations as defining properties of prose fiction, of particular import in nineteenth- and twentieth-century texts. Newton's fresh and nuanced readings cover a wide range of authors and periods, from Charles Dickens to Kazuo Ishiguro and Julian Barnes, from Herman Melville to Richard Wright, from Joseph Conrad and Henry James to Sherwood Anderson and Stephen Crane. An original work of theory as well as a deft critical performance, Narrative Ethics also stakes a claim for itself as moral inquiry. To that end, Newton braids together the ethical-philosophical projects of Emmanuel Levinas, Stanley Cavell, and Mikhail Bakhtin as a kind of chorus for his textual analyses--an elegant bridge between philosophy's ear and literary criticism's voice. His work will generate enormous interest among scholars and students of English and American literature, as well as specialists in narrative and literary theory, hermeneutics, and contemporary philosophy.Table of Contents: Acknowledgments Abbreviations Narrative as Ethics Toward a Narrative Ethics We Die in a Last Word: Conrad's Lord Jimand Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio Lessons of (for) the Master: Short Fiction by Henry James Creating the Uncreated Features of His Face: Monstration in Crane, Melville, and Wright Telling Others: Secrecy and Recognition in Dickens, Barnes, and Ishiguro Conclusion Notes Index Reviews of this book: Newton's book will become a pivotal text in our discussions of the ethical implications of reading. He has taken into account a great deal of prior work, and written with judgment and wisdom.--Daniel Schwartz, NarrativeReviews of this book: Newton offers elegant, provocative readings of texts ranging from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner to Winesburg, Ohio, The Remains of the Day, and Bleak House.Newton's book is a rich vein of critical ore that can be mined profitably.--ChoiceReading Narrative Ethics is a powerful experience, for it engages not just the intellect, but the emotions, and dare I say, the spirit. It stands apart from recent books on ethics in literature by virtue of its severe insistence o its allegiance to an alternative ethical tradition. This alternative way of thinking--and living--has its roots in the work of the Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas and finds support in the writings of Mikhail Bakhtin and Stanley Cavell.Stories, Newton asserts, are not ethical because of their morals or because of their normative logic. They are ethical because of the work they perform, in the social world, of binding teller, listener, witness, and reader to one another.This is a work of passion, integrity, commitment, and mission.--Jay Clayton, Vanderbilt UniversityNewton probes with admirable subtlety the key question: what do we gain--and what dangers do we run--when we fully enter the life of an 'other' through that 'other's' story? We have here a rare combination of deep and learned critical acumen with passionate love for literature and sensitivity to its nuances.--Wayne C. Booth, University of ChicagoAdam Zachary Newton writes with illuminating passion. Drawing on writers as diverse as Conrad and Henry James, Melville and Sherwood Anderson, Bakhtin and Levinas, he asks what it is to turn one's life into a story for another, and what it is to respond to, or avoid the claim of, another person's narration. He has written a wonderful, important book.--Martha Nussbaum, University of Chicago

Ethics in literature --- Fiction --- Philosophy, Modern --- Ethics, Modern --- Narration (Rhetoric) --- American fiction --- English literature --- Moral and ethical aspects --- History and criticism --- Theory, etc. --- Ethics in literature. --- Narration (Rhetoric). --- Moral and ethical aspects. --- Ethics [Modern ] --- Ethiek [Moderne ] --- Ethiek in de literatuur --- Ethique dans la littérature --- Ethique moderne --- Narration (Rhétorique) --- Narrative writing --- Verhaal (Retoriek) --- American literature --- General ethics --- Thematology --- Literary rhetorics --- -English literature --- -Ethics in literature --- -Fiction --- -Narration (Rhetoric) --- -Narrative (Rhetoric) --- Rhetoric --- Discourse analysis, Narrative --- Narratees (Rhetoric) --- Modern philosophy --- Metafiction --- Novellas (Short novels) --- Novels --- Stories --- Literature --- Novelists --- Modern ethics --- British literature --- Inklings (Group of writers) --- Nonsense Club (Group of writers) --- Order of the Fancy (Group of writers) --- -Theory, etc --- Philosophy --- Narrative (Rhetoric) --- History and criticism&delete& --- Theory, etc --- English fiction --- Rhetoric - Moral and ethical aspects. --- Fiction - Moral and ethical aspects. --- Ethics, Modern. --- Language and languages --- Speaking --- Authorship --- Expression --- Literary style --- History and criticism. --- 82:17 --- 82:17 Literatuur en ethiek --- Literatuur en ethiek --- Roman américain --- Littérature anglaise --- Théorie littéraire --- Roman américain --- Littérature anglaise --- Théorie littéraire

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A reading of African American and Jewish American writers from Henry Roth and Ralph Ellison to Philip Roth and David Bradley. Reading the work of such writers alongside and through one another, Newton's book offers an original way of juxtaposing two major traditions in modern American literature, and rethinking the sometimes vexed relationship between two constituencies ordinarily confined to sociopolitical or media commentary alone. Newton combines Emmanuel Levinas's ethical philosophy and Walter Benjamin's theory of allegory in shaping an innovative kind of ethical-political criticism. Through artful, dialogical readings of Saul Bellow and Chester Himes, David Mamet and Anna Deavere Smith, and others, Newton seeks to represent American Blacks and Jews outside the distorting mirror of 'Black-Jewish Relations', and restrictive literary histories alike. A final chapter addresses the Black/Jewish dimension of the O. J. Simpson trial.

American fiction --- Literature and society --- Judaism and literature --- African American authors --- Jewish authors --- African Americans --- African Americans in literature. --- Race relations in literature. --- Jews in literature. --- Afro-American authors --- Authors, African American --- Negro authors --- Authors, American --- Afro-Americans in literature --- Negroes in literature --- African American-Jewish relations --- Jewish-African American relations --- Jews --- Negro-Jewish relations --- Authors --- History and criticism. --- History --- Political and social views. --- Relations with Jews. --- Relations with African Americans --- United States --- Race relations. --- Race question --- Intellectual life. --- Arts and Humanities --- Literature --- American fiction Jewish authors --- History and criticism

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Ethics in literature --- Fiction --- Philosophy, Modern --- Ethics, Modern --- Narration (Rhetoric) --- American fiction --- English literature

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This book tells the story of a Jewish Studies that hasn’t fully happened—at least not yet. Newton asks what we mean when we say “Jewish Studies”—and when we imagine it not as mere amalgam but as a project. Jewish Studies offers a unique perspective from which to view the horizon of the academic humanities because, although it arrived belatedly, it has spanned a range of disciplinary locations and configurations, from an “origin story” in nineteenth-century historicism and philology, to the emancipatory politics of the Enlightenment, to the ethnicity-driven pluralism of the postwar decades, to more recent configurations within an interdisciplinary cultural studies. The conflicted allegiances with respect to traditions, disciplines, divisions, stakes, and stakeholders represent the structural and historical situation of the field, as it comes into contact with the humanities more broadly. At once a literary and philosophical thinker, Newton deploys a tableau of texts in concert with an ensemble of vivid, elastic tropes not only to theorize Jewish Studies but also to reimagine it as an agent of that potency Jacques Derrida calls “leverage”—a force multiplier for the field’s multiple possibilities. In refiguring a Jewish Studies to come, the book intervenes in a broader discourse about the challenge of professing disciplinary knowledges while promoting transit across their boundaries. Jewish Studies as Counterlife further amplifies Newton’s career-long articulation of the dialogic as the staging ground of ethical encounter.

Judaism --- Jews --- Study and teaching (Higher) --- Academy. --- Community. --- Jewish Studies. --- Science of Judaism. --- dialogic, disciplinarity. --- figure. --- humanities. --- inter-discursive. --- lever. --- pitchfork. --- report. --- satire. --- “to come”.

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How can cradling, handling, or rubbing a text be said, ethically, to have made something happen? What, as readers or interpreters, may come off in our hands in as we maculate or mark the books we read? For Adam Zachary Newton, reading is an embodied practice wherein “ethics” becomes a matter of tact—in the doubled sense of touch and regard. With the image of the book lying in the hands of its readers as insistent refrain, To Make the Hands Impure cuts a provocative cross-disciplinary swath through classical Jewish texts, modern Jewish philosophy, film and performance, literature, translation, and the material text. Newton explores the ethics of reading through a range of texts, from the Talmud and Midrash to Conrad’s Nostromo and Pascal’s Le Mémorial, from works by Henry Darger and Martin Scorsese to the National September 11 Memorial and a synagogue in Havana, Cuba. In separate chapters, he conducts masterly treatments of Emmanuel Levinas, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Stanley Cavell by emphasizing their performances as readers—a trebled orientation to Talmud, novel, and theater/film. To Make the Hands Impure stages the encounter of literary experience and scriptural traditions—the difficult and the holy—through an ambitious, singular, and innovative approach marked in equal measure by erudition and imaginative daring.

Art and morals. --- Ethics in literature. --- Philosophy, Modern --- Reader-response criticism. --- "the book". --- Edward Said. --- Emmanuel Levinas. --- Ethics of Reading. --- Hands. --- Hermeneutics. --- Materiality. --- Mikhail Bakhtin. --- Proximity. --- Scriputre. --- Stanley Cavell. --- Text. --- ethics. --- touch/tactility. --- tum'at yadayim.