Untimely Beggar

This highly original book takes as its starting point a central question for nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature and philosophy: how to represent the poor?   Covering the period from the publication of Les Fleurs du Mal in 1857 to the composition of Benjamin’s final texts in the 1930s, Untimely Beggar investigates the coincidence of two modern literary and philosophical interests: representing the poor and representing potential. To take account of literature’s relation to the poor