More attention has been paid to "ultimate works" in painting and music than in literature, to Schubert 's Schwanengesang, to Poussin's L'Hiver. In part, but not exclusively, this will be a reflection on the end of literary careers, with models as distant as Rimbaud and Philip Roth. A corollary question would be: is there a beyond to writing, or more simply, an aftermath? Barthes tackled this challenge head-on at the start of his last lecture on La Préparation du roman: can we stop writing, he asked?
The ends of literature, then, would be completion and incompletion, denouement and prolongation, retreat and renewal, but also intention or purpose, to the exclusion, of course, of cessation.
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Lecture
The end of literature
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