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6 | 2024
Percival Everett: theory, philosophy and fiction

This volume explores the interplay between Everett’s finely crafted plots and the complex theoretical and philosophical backgrounds against which they develop. Indeed one of the defining features of Everett’s work seems to be the combination of, on the one hand, engaging plots, rich with suspense and surprises, and just as engaging characters, whose diverse gallery offers many an opportunity for sympathy and identification, and on the other, of often demanding lines of reflection pursued in the fields of theory and philosophy, more specifically mathematics, logics, linguistics and the philosophy of language. Despite the variety in genres, tones and topics from one book to another, all of Everett’s works are marked by such tension between realism and theory, mimetic illusion and metafiction.

The object of the present collection, delving into theories of literary genres, narrative theory, medical discourses and animal studies, among others, the better to approach the subtleties of Everett’s work, is not only to examine some of the complex interactions between art and philosophy, creative practice and critical thought, the canon and the margins in Everett’s oeuvre, but also to enhance the many ways in which it opens out potentials for renewing modalities of thinking, speaking and being, through questioning them. In the process, the singularity of literature is highlighted, as well as its subversive power. Indeed Everett’s work brings to the fore the nature of artistic writing as resistance as well as the source of infinite reinvention and gratification.

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