Few terms have been more prone and resistant to definition than the literary and the real. Bringing them together, under the contrivance of the Literary Real, sheds new light on the understanding of the terms real, being, existence, the literary, literature and writing and alters our thinking on them. By means of Bataille’s exposure to the violent disorder of life, and Blanchot’s passionate meditation on literature and language, A Critical Encounter addresses two questions that are constantly entwined: first, what kind of real is involved and disclosed in writing – and how does this differ from reality in its more traditional sense and from conventional representations of reality? Second, what is writing’s own mode of ‘being’? In what way is it particular and what are the implications of this particularity? This volume investigates the real effect the existence of literature has on our lives: how it challenges and reconfigures the way we perceive ourselves, our place in the world and our relations with others.