The imperative to write [electronic resource] : destitutions of the sublime in Kafka, Blanchot, and Beckett / Jeff Fort.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction -- Kafka. Kafka's teeth: the literary gewissenbiss -- The ecstasy of judgment -- Embodied violence and the leap from the law: "in The penal colony" and The trial -- Degradation of the sublime: A hunger artist -- Blanchot. Pointed instants: Blanchot's exigencies -- The shell and the mask: L'arrêt de mort -- The dead look: The death mask, the corpse image, and the haunting of fiction -- Beckett. Beckett's voices and the paradox of expression -- Company, but not enough -- Conclusion: speech unredeemed: from the call of conscience to the torture of language.

Description based on print version record.