Edmond Jabès and the Archaeology of the Book

Perspectives on Jewish Texts and Contexts focuses on the Jewish textual tradition as well as the ways it evolves in response to new intellectual, historical, social and political contexts. Fostering dialogue between literary, philosophical, political and religious perspectives, this series, which consists of original scholarship and proceedings of international conferences, reflects contemporary concerns of Jewish Studies in the broadest sense.

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This book offers a fresh reflection on The Book of Questions by the French-Egyptian Jewish writer Edmond Jabès and its readings, and proposes to re-contextualize　Jabès' enigmatic prose through the lens of the author’s manuscripts. Addressed are the main prisms through which Jabès’ oeuvre has been read since its publication in 1963: Jewishness, the Shoah, intertextuality with Midrash and Kabbalah, hermeticism and interpretation. It analyzes their shapes and their becoming in the work-in-progress, reveals the dynamics and the contexts of their evolution from the pre-texts to the text and beyond, and reflects on the relationship between creation, interpretation, and writing as a process. It seeks to rethink our reading of The Book of Questions and the poetics and hermeneutics of enigmatic writing.