Mikel Dufrenne
Le poétique.
Presses Universitaires de France, 1973. Bibliothèque de Philosophie Contemporaine. Second edition, revised and enlarged. 256 pages.
Softcover volume, measuring approximately 5.75" x 8.75", displays moderate wear, with the word "specimen" perforated in the upper outside corner of front cover. Binding is sound. Name of previous owner appears at top of half title page. 17 pages have (often minimal) marginal markings and/or underling. Remaining text is otherwise clean and bright.
"By turning to Nature, to a nature that produces, to a nature that speaks, Mikel Dufrenne intends first to answer a precise question: what is the essence of the poetic? Posed in these terms, the problem is internal to aesthetics, as a philosophical discipline. It is articulated in two questions: what makes the poem, as a work of language, poetic? what makes the poet, as a craftsman of language, inhabited by poetry, by the poetic state?"