Merleau-Ponty has long been known as one of the most important philosophers of aesthetics, yet most discussions of his aesthetics focus on visual art. This book corrects that balance by turning to Merleau-Ponty's extensive engagement with literature.

Preface | ix
Abbreviations of Works by Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Other Writers | xi
Introduction
Galen A. Johnson | 1
Part I: Merleau-Ponty's Poets
1 ¿The Proustian Corporeity¿ and ¿The True Hawthorns¿:
Merleau-Ponty as a Reader of Proust between Husserl and Benjamin
Mauro Carbone | 17
2 A Poetics of Co-Naissance:
Via André Breton, Paul Claudel, and Claude Simon
Emmanuel de Saint Aubert | 31
3 From the World of Silence to Poetic Language:
Merleau-Ponty and Valéry
Galen A. Johnson | 68
Part II: Merleau-Ponty's Poetics
4 The Clouded Surface: Literature and Philosophy
as Visual Apparatuses According to Merleau-Ponty
Mauro Carbone | 101
5 Metaphoricity: Carnal Infrastructures and Ontological Horizons
Emmanuel de Saint Aubert | 121
6 On the Poetic and the True
Galen A. Johnson | 159
Acknowledgments | 191
Notes | 193
Index | 241

Galen A. Johnson (Author)
Galen A. Johnson is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Rhode Island. He has been General Secretary (Executive Director) of the International Merleau-Ponty Circle (2005¿2015) and Jane C. Ebbs Endowed Professor of Philosophy (2016¿2018). He is the author of The Retrieval of the Beautiful: Thinking through Merleau-Ponty¿s Aesthetics (Northwestern University Press, 2010) and editor of The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader: Philosophy and Painting (Northwestern University Press, 1993).
Mauro Carbone (Author)
Mauro Carbone is Professor of Aesthetics at the Faculté de Philosophie of the University Jean Moulin Lyon 3 and an Honorary Member of the Institut Universitaire de France. He is the founder and the coeditor of the journal Chiasmi International: Trilingual Studies Concerning Merleau-Ponty¿s Thought. His present research focuses on the connections between philosophy and contemporary visual experience. Among his books are The Flesh of Images: Merleau-Ponty between Painting and Cinema (SUNY Press, 2015) and Philosophy-Screens: From Cinema to Digital Revolution (SUNY Press, 2019).
Emmanuel de Saint Aubert (Author)
Emmanuel de Saint Aubert is Research Director at the Husserl Archives in Paris (National Center for Scientific Research, École Normale Supérieure). His research bears most particularly on the work of Merleau-Ponty, rereading him through the lens of an overall knowledge of numerous unpublished writings. Among his books are Vers une ontologie indirecte: Sources et enjeux critiques de l¿appel à l¿ontologie chez Merleau-Ponty (Vrin, 2006) and Être et chair I: Du corps au désir¿L¿habilitation ontologique de la chair (Vrin, 2013).