Biography, Style and the Phenomenology of Self-Writing

Preview: Phenomenology engaged with literature from its very beginnings, across all its main centers: the Munich circle (Johannes Daubert), the Göttingen school (Roman Ingarden), and Freiburg (Heidegger). Contemporary French scholars such as Claude Romano, Henri Maldiney, Éliane Escoubas, and Jean-Louis Chrétien have further strengthened this phenomenological engagement with literature. However, the phenomenological interest in literature – whether in the work of Ingarden or Wolfgang Iser – and even the creative inspiration drawn from literature in the cases of Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas are not equivalent to a direct interest in narrative and narrativity. While the question of literature was addressed by most phenomenological scholars – including those already mentioned – the topic of narrativity was treated far less directly.