John Banville and His Precursors

Bringing together leading international scholars, John Banville and His Precursors explores Booker and Franz Kafka prize-winning Irish author John Banvilles most significant intellectual influences. The book explores how Banvilles novels engage deeply with a wide range of sources, from literary figures such as Samuel Beckett, Heinrich von Kleist, Wallace Stevens, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Henry James, to thinkers such as Freud, Heidegger, and Blanchot. Reading the full range of Banvilles writings - from his Booker Prize-winning novel The Sea to his latest book, Mrs Osmond John Banville and His Precursors reveals the richness of the authors work. In this way, the book also raises questions about the contemporary moments relationship to a variety of intellectual and cultural traditions - Romanticism, Modernism, existentialism and how the significance of these can be appreciated in new and often surprising ways.