ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the use of the term ‘event’ by continental philosophers, with particular reference to Derrida: the event is an unpredictable irruption into the foreseeable course of occurrences which is nevertheless repeatable. The event of literary invention is considered, as is the event of literary reading, whereby the reader responds to, and is changed by, the inventiveness, singularity and alterity of the work. A related term is ‘experience’: it is the reader’s experience of the work as event that brings it into being as literary. Central to the experience of literature is the question of form. One possible experience of Browning’s short poem ‘Meeting at Night’ is offered as an example, demonstrating that its formal properties, as they are encountered in a temporal event in conjunction with the unfolding of meaning, contribute to its power as a singular literary work.
