Summary: Publisher Summary 1 Gourgouris considers the capacity of literature to theorize the conditions of the world from which it emerges and to which it addresses itself. The focus is on the process by which literature provides access to knowledge and on what sort of knowledge this might be. Through this analysis, literature is shown to be an emancipatory force of anti-theological and worldly knowledge. The author teaches comparative literature at Columbia University. Annotation (c) Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)   Publisher Summary 2 What is the process by which literature might provide us with access to knowledge, and what sort of knowledge might this be? The question is not simply whether literature thinks, but whether literature thinks theoretically—whether it has a capacity, without the external aid of analytical methods that have determined Western philosophy and science since the Enlightenment, to theorize the conditions of the world from which it emerges and to which it addresses itself. Suspicion about literature’s access to knowledge is ancient, at least as old as Plato's notorious expulsion of the poets from the city in the Republic. With full awareness of this classical background and in dialogue with a broad range of twentieth-century thinkers, Gourgouris examines a range of literary texts, from Sophocles’ Antigoneto Don DeLillo’s The Names, as he traces out his argument that literature possesses an intrinsic theoretical capacity to make sense of the nonpropositional.