{"id":11468,"date":"2019-10-25T10:05:11","date_gmt":"2019-10-25T09:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/?p=11468"},"modified":"2019-10-25T10:05:11","modified_gmt":"2019-10-25T09:05:11","slug":"ben-hutchinson-peter-handke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/2019\/10\/25\/ben-hutchinson-peter-handke\/","title":{"rendered":"Ben Hutchinson on the controversial Nobel laureate Peter Handke"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ben Hutchinson, Professor of European Literature in the Department of Modern Languages and Academic Director of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kent.ac.uk\/paris\/\">Paris School of Arts and Culture<\/a>, has published an article in the Times Literary Supplement titled <a href=\"https:\/\/www.the-tls.co.uk\/articles\/public\/entering-curious-canon-handke\/\">\u2018Peter Handke: entering the curious canon\u2019<\/a>, a consideration of the legacy of the controversial Nobel laureate.<\/p>\n<p>Ben writes that the Austrian writer\u2019s reputation had long preceded him, even before the Nobel committee\u2019s decision to award him the 2019 prize for literature. He notes that \u201cthe decision has not so much polarized opinion \u2013 to use the customary clich\u00e9 \u2013 as galvanized it: \u2018dumbfounded by the selection\u2019, the president of Pen America speaks for many when she concludes that \u2018the literary community deserves better\u2019. In 2019, the Nobel committee seems to have achieved something it very rarely does, namely to unite everyone in agreement\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>The crucial issue, however, is not Handke\u2019s politics, but his poetics. Does his work matter? Ben asks whether Handke will continue to be read a century from now, or whether he will fall into obscurity like a number of Nobel laureates. \u201cFramed this way, the question is not so much about Handke\u2019s questionable political interventions \u2013 above all, his defence of Slobodan Milo\u0161evi\u0107 \u2013 as about his literary merit. Is he any good?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ben Hutchinson, Professor of European Literature in the Department of Modern Languages and Academic Director of the Paris School of Arts and Culture, has published &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/2019\/10\/25\/ben-hutchinson-peter-handke\/\">Read&nbsp;more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":52167,"featured_media":11470,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[135858,18583],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11468"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/52167"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11468"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11480,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11468\/revisions\/11480"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}