Online research in philosophy

Literature and the soul.--Literature and light.--Literature and beauty.--Literature and the Word.

" Of Literature and Knowledge looks ... like an important advance in this new and very important subject... literature is about to become even more interesting.

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.

Gibson’s exploration of literature in this ambitious work positions itself as a response to Jean-Paul Sartre’s series of essays published as What is Literature? in 1947. Gibson claims that the nature of literature is not, as Sartre asserts, ‘finite and particular’ but rather a ‘series of infinite qualities’ (479). He explains that literature opens up meaning continually and in surprising ways. The concept of surprise is fundamental to Gibson’s contention that literature is ‘counter-intuitive’. Thus the main thesis of the book is contained in Gibson’s assertion that ‘great literature directs attention to new ways of seeing’ (19). This statement could be just as usefully applied to Gibson’s own book. In it he proposes a myriad of positions from which to consider the infinite and surprising nature of literature.

This book examines the complex and varied ways in which fictions relate to the real world, and offers a precise account of how imaginative works of literature can use fictional content to explore matters of universal human interest. While rejecting the traditional view that literature is important for the truths that it imparts, the authors also reject attempts to cut literature off altogether from real human concerns. Their detailed account of fictionality, mimesis, and cognitive value, founded on the methods of analytical philosophy, restores to literature its distinctive status among cultural practices. The authors also explore metaphysical and skeptical views, prevalent in modern thought, according to which the world itself is a kind of fiction, and truth no more than a social construct. They identify different conceptions of fiction in science, logic, epistemology, and make-believe, and thereby challenge the idea that discourse per se is fictional and that different modes of discourse are at root indistinguishable. They offer rigorous analyses of the roles of narrative, imagination, metaphor, and "making" in human thought processes. Both in their methods and in their conclusions, Lamarque and Olsen aim to restore rigor and clarity to debates about the values of literature, and to provide new, philosophically sound foundations for a genuine change of direction in literary theorizing.

Philosophy of Literature presents six newly-commissioned essays from international scholars that address some of the key issues relating to the philosophy of literature, a thriving and increasingly influential branch of aesthetics Features a half dozen newly commissioned articles from leading scholars in the field of philosophy of literature Focuses on a branch of aesthetics that has not received the attention it deserves Includes a reading on the historical relationship between philosophy and literature with recent developments and projections for the future Contributors include Peter Lamarque (University of York), Peter Kivy (Rutgers University, USA) and Stein Haugom Olsen (University of Bergen, Norway).

This is the first comprehensive introduction to Deleuze's work on literature. It provides thorough treatments of Deleuze's early book on Proust and his seminal volume on Kafka and minor literature. Deleuze on Literature situates those studies and many other scattered writings within a general project that extends throughout Deleuze's career-that of conceiving of literature as a form of health and the writer as a cultural physician.

Literature, like the visual arts, posess its own characteristic philosophical problems. Literary theorists have discussed widely the nature of literature, while analytic philosophers have dealt with literary problems within the framework of aesthetics or have restricted themselves to topics which are accessible only to a philosophical audience. Philosophy of Literature is unique in that it introduces the philosophy of literature from an analytic perspective which is both accessible to students of literature and students of philosophy. Specifically, the book addresses: the definition of literature, the distinction between oral and written literature and the identity of literary works. Philosophy of Literature offers fresh approaches to traditional issues and raises new questions about the nature of philosophical problems which literature gives rise to.

The Philosophy of Literature offers an opportunity to consider the gap between the analytic and the continental traditions of aesthetics. In particular, Lamarque's survey fails to take account of the possibility that literature is an institution and a practice that challenges the conventions of instrumental rationality, a position held by a number of continental philosophers who have written on art. It also pays little attention to the reader's experience of the inventiveness of the literary work, preferring to represent the reading of literature as a matter of conventions confirmed. An alternative understanding of the literary work as an event that opens up new possibilities for the reader, put forward in the author's recent book, The Singularity of Literature, is sketched.