u003cpu003eu003ciu003eThe Emergence of Literature u003c/iu003eis an extension and reworking of a series of significant propositions in philosophy and literary theory: Jean-Luc Nancy and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe's examination of the concept of the literary absolute; Martin Heidegger's destruction and Giorgio Agamben's archaeology of the metaphysics of will; Maurice Blanchot's delimitation of the space of literature; and Michel Foucault's archaeology of literature. Its core contribution to the history of theory is to understand the literary absolute not simply as philosophical concept, but as a paradigm that delimits the horizon for currents of literary theory through the course of the 20th century where the literary criteria change from the theme of sincerity to the theme of the death of the author. u003cbru003eu003cbru003eStretching from Kant to Hegel, from Hölderlin to the Early German Romantics, from John Stuart Mill to New Criticism, from Benjamin to Barthes, u003ciu003eThe Emergence of Literature u003c/iu003eexamines the relation between continental philosophy and literature in the post-Kantian era.u003c/pu003e