Despite the upsurge of interest in Theodor Adorno's work, his literary writings are generally under-represented. However, literature is a central element in his aesthetic theory. Bringing together original essays from a an international group of contributors, this book offers a wide ranging account of the literary components of Adorno's thinking.

Notes on Contributors; Acknowledgements; Abbreviations; Introduction, David Cunningham (University of Westminster, UK) and Nigel Mapp (University of Tampere, Finland); Part I: Philosophy, Aesthetics and Literature; 1. Literature, and the Modern System of the Arts: Sources of Criticism in Adorno, Stewart Martin (Middlesex University, UK); 2. Adorno's critical Presence: Cultural Theory and Literary Value, Martin Ryle (University of Sussex, UK) and Kate Soper (London Metropolitan University, UK); 3. Interpretation and Truth: Adorno on Literature and Music, Andrew Bowie (Royal Holloway, UK); 4. Adorno and the Poetics of Genre, Eva Geulen (University of Bonn, Germany); Part II: Poetry and Poetics; 5. Lyric Poetry Before Auschwitz, Howard Caygill (Goldsmiths, UK); 6. The Truth in Verse? Adorno, Wordsworth, Prosody, Simon Jarvis (University of Cambridge, UK); 7. Lyric's Expression: Musicality, Conceptuality, Critical Agency, Robert Kaufman (Stanford University, USA); 8. Returning to the 'House of Oblivion': Celan Between Adorno and Heidegger, Iain Macdonald (University of Montreal, Canada); Part III: Modernity, Drama and the Novel; 9. Forgetting - Faust: Adorno and Kommerell, Paul Fleming (New York University, USA); 10. Adorno's Aesthetic Theory and Lukacs's Theory of the Novel, Timothy Hall (University of East London, UK); 11. No Nature, No Nothing: Adorno, Beckett, Disenchantment, Nigel Mapp (University of Tampere, Finland); 12. Late Style in Naipaul: Adorno's Aesthetic and the Postcolonial Novel, Timothy Bewes (Brown University, USA); 13. After Adorno: The Narrator of the Contemporary European Novel, David Cunningham (University of Westminster, UK); Index.