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Taught by the Max Kade Visiting Professor. According to Aristotle’s Poetics, the poet’s task is to speak not of things that have happened (ta genomena) but of the sort of things that might happen and are possible (dunata). But how does the literary work come into being—in other words, how is it possible as a locus of possibilities? Since the late 18th century, authors have increasingly focused on their manuscripts as the space of poetic potential and have engaged in different ways with the gestural, technical, and pictorial dynamics of writing. In this course, we will look at these material practices and how they shape notions of poetic possibility. Authors to include Hölderlin, Nietzsche among others. The class will also consider the theorry of poetic writing in the Paris school of critique génétique.