Skip to main content
Log in

Aesthetics and literature: a problematic relation?

  • Published:
Philosophical Studies Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The paper argues that there is a proper place for literature within aesthetics but that care must be taken in identifying just what the relation is. In characterising aesthetic pleasure associated with literature it is all too easy to fall into reductive accounts, for example, of literature as merely “fine writing”. Belleslettrist or formalistic accounts of literature are rejected, as are two other kinds of reduction, to pure meaning properties and to a kind of narrative realism. The idea is developed that literature—both poetry and prose fiction—invites its own distinctive kind of aesthetic appreciation which far from being at odds with critical practice, in fact chimes well with it.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Kermode (2004).

  2. For further arguments in favour of “aesthetic quality” over “ideology” in canon formation, see van Peer (1996).

  3. Kermode (2004, p. 66).

  4. Bloom (1994, p. 9).

  5. Bloom (1994, p. 22).

  6. A view found, for example, in Bourdieu (1984) and Eagleton (1990).

  7. For an overview of some of the issues, see Lamarque and Olsen (2003).

  8. It should be noted that the conception of appreciation developed in this paper is distinct from an alternative conception, which I do not have space to consider but should not be left unmentioned, advanced by Feagin (1996). Feagin’s conception principally concerns affect or feeling, although it includes elements of interpretation and meta-reflection. She offers a sophisticated account of the psychology of our responses to literary fiction—notably our emotions of empathy and sympathy—and explores the multiple ways that literary works stimulate and manipulate feelings, which in turn ultimately ground value judgments. Much of this is highly illuminating but there are doubts about its centrality to aesthetics and indeed to literary criticism. One might suppose that critics like John Guillory would take affective response, like pleasure, to be “neutralized as the merely contingent effect of reception” (see above). There are worries too that emphasis on localised affects cannot account for a work’s overall aesthetic unity. For a discussion see Lamarque (2000b).

  9. Sibley (1974).

  10. It is explicitly rejected in Olsen (1987, p. 7).

  11. E.g. Kivy (1973).

  12. Sibley (2003, p. 133).

  13. The singularity of the work is often remarked. Hence Malcolm Budd: “The value of poetry is singular or non-substitutable; poetry has an importance it could never lose by being replaced by something else that achieves the same end; for what we value is the experience of the poem itself, a specifically linguistic expression of a complex of thought, desire and sentiment.” (Budd (1995, p.85)). It is notable that Budd makes the point by reference to the “experience” of poetry.

  14. Hume (1739–40).

  15. See Lamarque (2001).

  16. Hume has noted the inappropriateness of powerful rhetoric on such occasions: “Who could ever think of it as a good expedient for comforting an afflicted parent, to exaggerate, with all the force of elocution, the irreparable loss, which he has met with by the death of a favourite child? The more power of imagination and expression you here employ, the more you encrease his despair and affliction.” (David Hume, “Of Tragedy”)

  17. Rowe (2004, pp.174–175).

  18. Barthes (1977).

  19. Rorty (1992, p. 97).

  20. See, e.g. Carroll (1991).

  21. Stecker (2003, p. 59).

  22. The distinctions between text/work and understanding/appreciation are developed in more detail, for example, in Lamarque (2000a) and Lamarque (2002). I acknowledge a considerable debt to Stein Haugom Olsen who pioneered similar ideas in Olsen (1987). They also appear in Lamarque and Olsen (1994).

  23. Greene (1968, pp. 648–649).

  24. Greene (1968, pp. 649–650).

  25. Miller (1977, p. 951–952).

  26. Miller (1977, pp. 948–9).

  27. Miller (1977, p. 952).

  28. For further discussion, see Lamarque (2003) and Lamarque and Olsen (1994, Ch. 6).

  29. Dickens (1977, p. 403).

  30. For more details of this argument, see Lamarque (1996).

References

  • Barthes, R. (1977). The death of the author. In R. Barthes, Image-music-text. Fontana/Collins: Essays Selected and Translated by Stephen Heath, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bloom, H. (1994). The Western Canon: The books and schools of the ages. New York: Riverhead Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Budd, M. (1995). Values of art: Pictures, poetry and music. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carroll, N. (1991). Art, intention, and conversation. In G. Iseminger (Ed.), Intention and interpretation. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dickens, C. (1977). Bleak House. In G. Ford & S. Monod (Eds.), Norton Critical Edition, New York: W W Norton & Co Ltd.

  • Eagleton, T. (1990). Ideology of the aesthetic. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Feagin, S. (1996). Reading with feeling: The aesthetics of appreciation. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP.

    Google Scholar 

  • Greene, T. (1968). Spenser and the epithalamic convention. In H. Maclean (Ed.), Edmund Spenser’s poetry. New York: W W Norton & Co.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hume, D. (1739–40). A treatise of human nature, Part 4 Of the sceptical and other systems of philosophy, Sect. 6 Of personal identity.

  • Kermode, F. (2004). Pleasure and change: The aesthetics of canon. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kivy, P. (1973). Speaking of art. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lamarque, P. V. (1996). Logic and criticism. In P.V. Lamarque, Fictional points of view. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

  • Lamarque, P. V. (2000a). Objects of interpretation. Metaphilosophy, 31, 96–124.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lamarque, P. V. (2000b). Review of Susan Feagin. Reading With Feeling. Mind, 109, 145–149.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lamarque, P. V. (2001). Literature. In B. Gaut & D. Lopes (Eds.), The Routledge companion to aesthetics. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lamarque, P. V. (2002). Appreciation and literary interpretation. In M. Krausz (Ed.), Is there a single right interpretation? (pp. 285–306). University Park: Penn State University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lamarque, P. V. (2003). How to create a fictional character. In B.Gaut & P. Livingston (Eds.), The creation of art. (pp. 33–52). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lamarque, P. V., & Olsen, S. H. (1994). Truth, fiction, and literature: A philosophical perspective. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lamarque, P. V., & Olsen, S. H. (2003). The philosophy of literature: Pleasure restored. In P. Kivy (Ed.), Blackwell guide to aesthetics. (pp. 195–214). Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Miller, J. H. (1977). The World of Bleak House. (In Charles Dickens, Bleak House, Norton Critical Edition, edited by G. Ford & S. Monod, New York: W W Norton & Co Ltd).

  • Olsen, S. H. (1987). Literary aesthetics and literary practice. In S. H. Olsen, The end of literary theory. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rorty, R. (1992). The pragmatist’s progress. In U. Eco, et al (Eds.), Interpretation and overinterpretation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rowe, M. (2004). Poetry and abstraction. In M. W. Rowe, Philosophy and literature: A book of essays. Aldershot: Ashgate.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sibley, F. (1974). Particularity, art, and evaluation. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, suppl. vol. 48, 1–21.

  • Sibley, F. (2003). Aesthetic concepts. In P. Lamarque & S. H. Olsen (Eds.), Aesthetics and the philosophy of art: The analytic tradition: An anthology. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stecker, R. (2003). Interpretation and construction. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • van Peer, W. (1996). Canon formation: Ideology or aesthetic quality? British Journal of Aesthetics, 36, 87–108.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Peter Lamarque.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Lamarque, P. Aesthetics and literature: a problematic relation?. Philos Stud 135, 27–40 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-007-9090-3

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-007-9090-3

Keywords

Navigation