First published in French as : Politique de la littâerature.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Hypotheses. The politics of literature ; Literary misunderstanding - - Figures. The putting to death of Emma Bovary : literature, democracy, and medicine. On the battlefield : Tolstoy, literature, history ; The intruder : Mallarmâe's politics ; The gay science of Bertolt Brecht ; B orges and French disease -- Crossings. The truth through the window : l iterary truth, Freudian truth ; The historian, literature and the genre of biography ; The poet at the philosopher's : Mallarmâe and Badiou.

In English translated from the French.