List Price: $100.00 Details

Save: $17.17 (17%)

FREE delivery April 23 - May 8. Details

Select delivery location

Only 15 left in stock - order soon.

$$82.83 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Ships from

GrandEagleRetail

Ships from

GrandEagleRetail

Sold by

GrandEagleRetail

Sold by

GrandEagleRetail

Returns

Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt

Returns

Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt

This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt. You may receive a partial or no refund on used, damaged or materially different returns.

Read full return policy

Payment

Secure transaction

Payment

Secure transaction

We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more

Details

$3.99 delivery April 16 - 22. Details

Or fastest delivery April 12 - 17. Details

Select delivery location

Used: Very Good | Details

Sold by midtownscholarbookstore

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

Other Sellers on Amazon

Added

Not added

$99.62
& FREE Shipping. Details

Sold by: Amazon.com

Follow the author

Giorgio Agamben

Follow

The End of the Poem: Studies in Poetics (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics) 1st Edition

by Giorgio Agamben (Author), Daniel Heller-Roazen (Translator)

6

Part of: Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics (33 books)

See all formats and editions

{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"$82.83","priceAmount":82.83,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"82","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"83","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"qOEjHPs9%2BMzS4BFguNJiSEAwXXJ%2Fhl8SRzJ%2FSsQaV61lBVid%2F6Me6xtwwrKpbpYFLO3R4A1HahLUi%2F5TCMyZEx5MmeJz%2FlTJH7N%2Bt86mlRR0lDmuAYTOAa356%2By0YJtVg%2F9L3rPHbmbKVu4zLRhIaMfHdXMGP1e1sX%2FOVDL8tB8CA7reDb78NO1anzcNYf0r","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}, {"displayPrice":"$20.98","priceAmount":20.98,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"20","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"98","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"qOEjHPs9%2BMzS4BFguNJiSEAwXXJ%2Fhl8SkTgjqFfDB305BpV9MD6l4oaWszHFsAtBW%2BO6wQ3sFJ2hGHCc8cH8AWvgod%2BvbpxHKJ7vx2WGWFap9qzvRWdbl%2F5pB3Vw7%2FscDkhMiOJLW01jkM%2F9U7du6c3nNHur89mF5uXv2Xyju60%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"USED","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":1}]}

Purchase options and add-ons

This book, by one of Italy's most important and original contemporary philosophers, represents a broad, general, and ambitious undertaking―nothing less than an attempt to rethink the nature of poetic language and to rearticulate relationships among theology, poetry, and philosophy in a tradition of literature initiated by Dante.

The author presents "literature" as a set of formal or linguistic genres that discuss or develop theological issues at a certain distance from the discourse of theology. This distance begins to appear in Virgil and Ovid, but it becomes decisive in Dante and in his decision to write in the vernacular. His vernacular Italian reaches back through classical allusion to the Latin that was in his day the language of theology, but it does so with a difference. It is no accident that in the Commedia Virgil is Dante's guide.

The book opens with a discussion of just how Dante's poem is a "comedy," and it concludes with a discussion of the "ends of poetry" in a variety of senses: enjambment at the ends of lines, the concluding lines of poems, and the end of poetry as a mode of writing this sort of literature. Of course, to have poetry "end" does not mean that people stop writing it, but that literature passes into a period in which it is concerned with its own ending, with its own bounds and limits, historical and otherwise.

Though most of the essays make specific reference to various authors of the Italian literary tradition (including Dante, Polifilo, Pascoli, Delfini, and Caproni), they transcend the confines of Italian literature and engage several other literary and philosophical authors (Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Boethius, the Provençal poets, Mallarmé, and Hölderlin, among others).

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

This book, by one of Italy’s most important and original contemporary philosophers, represents a broad, general, and ambitious undertaking—nothing less than an attempt to rethink the nature of poetic language and to rearticulate relationships among theology, poetry, and philosophy in a tradition of literature initiated by Dante.
The author presents “literature” as a set of formal or linguistic genres that discuss or develop theological issues at a certain distance from the discourse of theology. This distance begins to appear in Virgil and Ovid, but it becomes decisive in Dante and in his decision to write in the vernacular. His vernacular Italian reaches back through classical allusion to the Latin that was in his day the language of theology, but it does so with a difference. It is no accident that in the Commedia Virgil is Dante’s guide.
The book opens with a discussion of just how Dante’s poem is a “comedy,” and it concludes with a discussion of the “ends of poetry” in a variety of senses: enjambment at the ends of lines, the concluding lines of poems, and the end of poetry as a mode of writing this sort of literature. Of course, to have poetry “end” does not mean that people stop writing it, but that literature passes into a period in which it is concerned with its own ending, with its own bounds and limits, historical and otherwise.
Though most of the essays make specific reference to various authors of the Italian literary tradition (including Dante, Polifilo, Pascoli, Delfini, and Caproni), they transcend the confines of Italian literature and engage several other literary and philosophical authors (Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Boethius, the Provençal poets, Mallarmé, and Hölderlin, among others).

From the Back Cover

This book, by one of Italy’s most important and original contemporary philosophers, represents a broad, general, and ambitious undertaking—nothing less than an attempt to rethink the nature of poetic language and to rearticulate relationships among theology, poetry, and philosophy in a tradition of literature initiated by Dante.
The author presents “literature” as a set of formal or linguistic genres that discuss or develop theological issues at a certain distance from the discourse of theology. This distance begins to appear in Virgil and Ovid, but it becomes decisive in Dante and in his decision to write in the vernacular. His vernacular Italian reaches back through classical allusion to the Latin that was in his day the language of theology, but it does so with a difference. It is no accident that in the Commedia Virgil is Dante’s guide.
The book opens with a discussion of just how Dante’s poem is a “comedy,” and it concludes with a discussion of the “ends of poetry” in a variety of senses: enjambment at the ends of lines, the concluding lines of poems, and the end of poetry as a mode of writing this sort of literature. Of course, to have poetry “end” does not mean that people stop writing it, but that literature passes into a period in which it is concerned with its own ending, with its own bounds and limits, historical and otherwise.
Though most of the essays make specific reference to various authors of the Italian literary tradition (including Dante, Polifilo, Pascoli, Delfini, and Caproni), they transcend the confines of Italian literature and engage several other literary and philosophical authors (Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Boethius, the Provençal poets, Mallarmé, and Hölderlin, among others).

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Stanford University Press; 1st edition (June 1, 1999)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 164 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0804730210
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0804730211
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1590L
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 13 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5 x 0.7 x 8 inches

Customer Reviews:
6

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Giorgio Agamben

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Giorgio Agamben is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Venice. He is the author of Profanations (2007), Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive (2002), both published by Zone Books, and other books.

Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5

6 global ratings

2 star

0%

1 star

0%

How customer reviews and ratings work

Sort reviews by

Top review from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

StreetlightReader

From Poetry and Language to Life Itself

Reviewed in the United States on January 30, 2017

Although it can be said of pretty much all of Agamben’s work, 'The End of the Poem' in particular is a book so distinctively Agambenian that Agamben - and only Agamben - could have written anything even remotely resembling this curious yet intriguing set of essays. For one, while the study of poetics most definitely occupies centre stage here, it’s through a very - very - Italian lens that the subject is broached, with the poetry of Dante, Giovanni Pascoli, Giorgio Caproni and Arnaut Daniel (among others) marking the touchstones upon which the work proceeds. Indeed without a working knowledge of a) either Italian or Latin, and b) the reams of Italian philological scholarship engaged with here, 'The End of the Poem' is not an easy book to asses. Nonetheless, it’s Agamben’s second distinctive trait - exercised in spades throughout - that makes this book the captivating read that it is: namely, Agamben’s ability to find, in the most pedantic detail of textual analysis, the stakes upon with poetry, language and life itself turn upon.

The opening essay on Dante’s ''Divine Comedy, for instance, sets itself the task of figuring out exactly why the poet’s masterpiece is in fact a ‘comedy’ at all, given its not-exactly-jovial themes. Turns out, without relating this question to a series of issues revolving around the the nature of humanity, divine guilt, and God’s grace (as worked out through a series of engagements with St. Augustine, Averroes and Boethius), one isn't likely to get very far. It’s the kind of classic Agambenian approach so familiar to readers of his later works, in which, say, obscure figures of roman law are called upon to shed light on our modern, socio-political situation, only here at work on a kind of poetico-metaphysical scale. The continuities are more than structural however, and already here one can see Agamben’s abiding concern with ‘life' take shape, with many of the essays within attempting to articulate the exact relationship between poetry and life, as mediated through the indispensable - but rather mysterious - medium of language.

Indeed while poetics remains the subject of the work, it’s language, ultimately, which is its object; That is, at the book's heart lies the question: what can poetry contribute to our understanding of language, insofar as it exposes language to be not merely a kind of communicative ‘tool’, but a sphere of pure ‘communicability’ itself? If this last question seems enigmatic, part of the issue is that 'The End of the Poem' is, if nothing else, an attempt to circumscribe the space in which such a question can be asked at all - which is to say: read the book. As always, Agamben’s efforts are directed not necessarily towards answers, but at the attempt to think otherwise, to loosen up and fracture the received modes of thought through which we approach both poetry and the world at large. A final note: this book should absolutely be read in conjunction with Agamben’s Language and Death , which plays the philosophical counterpart to the poetic analyses that take place in this work. Given the concision and briskness with with this this book moves, it’s not the easiest stand-alone collection to read.