The Knowledge of Ignorance
From Genesis to Jules Verne

This highly original study is concerned with the theory of knowledge. It approaches the subject in a new way by exploring the recurrent paradox which equates pure ignorance with perfect knowledge, twin ideals free from the impurities and imperfections of discourse. The author combines the techniques of literary criticism and intellectual history in order to examine the literary, philosophical, theological, and political ramifications of this anxiety about, and ambition to transcend, the limits of the text. Dr Martin begins by tracing a network of interlocking motifs and images - beginning and end, nescience and omniscience, genesis and renascence, savagery and civilization - across a broad spectrum of texts from the Book of Genesis through the Renaissance (in particular the works of Nicholas of Cusa and Erasmus) to Rousseau. The central section of the book translates these temporal oppositions into the spatial antithesis of East and West in the Orientalism of Hugo, Napoleon and Chateaubriand. A final chapter draws together these apparently disparate themes in a consideration of the dichotomy of science and literature in Jules Verne's Voyages Extraordinaires.

Reviews & endorsements

'This is an audacious book ... [Martin's] proposition is a compelling one. Although his book is organized chronologically, it is actually a brilliant critical demonstration of the impossibility of solidly based history, of fact, of "truth". A gifted interpreter, Martin is also learned, precise and wonderfully sensitive to the divagations as well as the inherent craziness of the authors he has rightly chosen to highlight. Martin's criticism expresses, as forcefully and brilliantly as can be done, a reticence not just about history and language, but about any direction or coherency at all. In many ways Martin is radically digressive, Shandyan, oblique.' Edward Said, The Times Literary Supplement

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Product details

• Date Published: June 2009
• format: Paperback
• isbn: 9780521112482
• length: 272 pages

• dimensions: 216 x 140 x 16 mm
• weight: 0.35kg
• availability: Available