Recently, a number of Anglo-American philosophers of very different sorts--pragmatists, metaphysicians, philosophers of language, philosophers of law, moral philosophers--have taken a reflective rather than merely recreational interest in literature. Does this literary turn mean that philosophy is coming to an end or merely down to earth? In this collection of essays, one of the most insightful of contemporary literary theorists investigates the intersection of literature and philosophy, analyzing the emerging preferences for practice over theory, particulars over universals, (...) events over structures, inhabitants over spectators, an ethics of responsibility over a morality of rules, and a desire for intimacy with the world instead of simply a disengaged knowledge of it. (shrink)
These lectures by one of the most influential and original philosophers of the twentieth century constitute a sustained argument for the philosophical basis of romanticism, particularly in its American rendering. Through his examination of such authors as Emerson, Thoreau, Poe, Wordsworth, and Coleridge, Stanley Cavell shows that romanticism and American transcendentalism represent a serious philosophical response to the challenge of skepticism that underlies the writings of Wittgenstein and Austin on ordinary language.
This timely book argues that the institutionalisation of literary theory, particularly within American and British academic circles, has led to a sterility of thought which ignores the special character of literary art. Mark Edmundson traces the origins of this tendency to the ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry, in which Plato took the side of philosophy; and he shows how the work of modern theorists - Foucault, Derrida, de Man and Bloom - exhibits similar drives to subsume poetic art (...) into some 'higher' kind of thought. Challenging and controversial, this book should be read by all teachers of literature and of theory, and by anyone concerned about the future of institutionalised literary studies. (shrink)
These essays deal with the scholarly study of the genesis, transmission, and editorial reconstitution of texts by exploring the connections between textual instability and textual theory, interpretation, and pedagogy. What makes this collection unique is that each essay brings a different theoretical orientation-New Historicism, Poststructuralism, or Feminism-to bear upon a different text, such as Whitman's Leaves of Grass , Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, or hypertext fiction, to explore the dialectical relationship between texts and textuality. The essays bring some (...) of the textual theories that compete with each other today into contact with a broad range of primarily literary textual histories. That texts are intrinsically unstable, frequently consisting of a series of determinate historical versions, has consequences for all students of literature, because different versions of a literary work frequently help shape different readings independently of the interpretations brought to bear upon them. Textual instability of the works is relevant to our understanding of how the meanings of texts are generated. The contributors build on the numerous challenges to the Anglo-American editorial tradition mounted during the past decade by scholars as diverse as Jerome McGann, D.F. McKenzie, Peter Shillingsburg, D.C. Greetham, Hershel Parker, and Hans Walter Gabler. The volume contributes to the paradigm shift in textual scholarship inaugurated by these scholars. Index. (shrink)
Michael Ryan's Literary Theory: A Practical Introduction, Second Edition introduces students to the full range of contemporary approaches to the study of literature and culture, from Formalism, Structuralism, and Historicism to Ethnic Studies, Gender Studies, and Global English. Introduces readings from a variety of theoretical perspectives, on classic literary texts. Demonstrates how the varying perspectives on texts can lead to different interpretations of the same work. Contains an accessible account of different theoretical approaches An ideal resource for use in (...) introductory courses on literary theory and criticism. Designed to function both as a stand-alone text and a companion to Rivkin and Ryan’s Literary Theory: An Anthology, Second Edition. (shrink)
Surveying 2,500 years of philosophically oriented literary theory, Patrick Hogan provides students and teachers of literature with both explication and ...
The essays in this collection are concerned with the philosophical problems that arise in connection with the understanding and evaluation of literature - such problems as the relationship between the work and the author (authorial intention), between the work and the world (reference and truth), the definition of a literary work, and the nature of literary theory itself. Professor Olsen attacks many of the orthodoxies of modern literary theory, in particular the enterprise to build a comprehensive systematic literary theory. (...) His own work is informed by a consistent perspective: the assumption that literature is a social institution governed by conventions, and that answers to problems of interpretation and appreciation can be found only through an analysis of these conventions. This is an important book for scholars and students of literary theory and philosophy, especially for those who see an ever-increasing cross-fertilization between the two disciplines. (shrink)
This succinct introduction to modern theories of literature and the arts demonstrates how each theory is built and what it can accomplish. Represents a wide variety of theories, including phenomenological theory, hermeneutical theory, gestalt theory, reception theory, semiotic theory, Marxist theory, deconstruction, anthropological theory, and feminist theory. Uses classic literary texts, such as Keats’s Ode on a Grecian Urn, Spenser’s The Shephearde’s Calender and T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land to illustrate his explanations. Includes key statements by the major (...) proponents of each theory. Presents the different theories objectively, allowing students to decide which if any, they subscribe to. Gives students a sense of the potential of theory. Includes a glossary of technical terms. (shrink)
In what sense is a consideration of a writer's intentions relevant to the reading and appreciation of his work? In the past half century, powerful arguments have been advanced that they are not relevant at all. Patrick Swinden examines the conduct of the anti-intentionalist argument by exponents of Anglo-American new criticism, European structuralism and various kinds of post-modernist theory, and finds it wanting. He enlists the aid of Kantian aesthetics and contemporary philosophy of language and action in an attempt (...) to reinstate mental operations leading to motivated and purposive action. The philosophical argument is reinforced by examination of the ways in which Shakespeare and other writers represent motive, intention and purpose in their work. (shrink)
"What is at stake in this book is nothing less than a dramatically new way of approaching literature, one which in its unostentatious, low key way scandalously smashes a whole range of liberal humanist icons." --Terry Eagleton Who is more important: the reader, or the writer? Originally published in French in 1966, Pierre Macherey's first and most famous work, A Theory of Literary Production dared to challenge perceived wisdom, and quickly established him as a pivotal figure in literary theory. (...) In this provocative work, Macherey puts the focus as much on the reader as the writer, stating that the very act of reading is a form of production in its own right, generating interpretation and meanings which are beyond the control of the author. Part of the birth of a whole new branch of post-structuralist theory, Macherey's work also influenced a new generation of critics among them Jacques Derrida, his contemporary, and Terry Eagleton. His ideas have also led some observers to claim that he announced the death of the author fully two years before Roland Barthes' famous essay. The reissue of this work as a Routledge Classic brings some radical ideas to a new audience, and argues persuasively for a totally new way of reading. As such, it is an essential work for anyone interested in the development of literary theory. (shrink)
Michael Ryan's Literary Theory: A Practical Introduction, Second Edition introduces students to the full range of contemporary approaches to the study of literature and culture, from Formalism, Structuralism, and Historicism to Ethnic Studies, Gender Studies, and Global English. Introduces readings from a variety of theoretical perspectives, on classic literary texts. Demonstrates how the varying perspectives on texts can lead to different interpretations of the same work. Contains an accessible account of different theoretical approaches An ideal resource for use in (...) introductory courses on literary theory and criticism. Designed to function both as a stand-alone text and a companion to Rivkin and Ryan’s Literary Theory: An Anthology, Second Edition. (shrink)
The early work of Mikhail Bakhtin is notable for its emphasis on questions in ethics and philosophy. Focusing on these early writings, though also informed by Bakhtin's later works of the early 1970s, the authors in this volume explore the human and prosaic dimensions of ethical and moral dilemmas, whether in the philosophical concerns of the Young Hegelians, the iconography and implicit doctrine of Christian redemption in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, in testimonial accounts of political martyrs in Latin America, or (...) in the nationalist features of Russian Village Prose. Incorporating a variety of disciplinary backgrounds into their essays, including theater arts, philosophy, history, women's studies, Latin Americanliterature, and Russian literature, the authors take Bakhtin's ethics, as articulated in his writings of 1919-1929, and extend them into areas of thought that themselves enter into fruitful dialogue with his theoretical positions, endeavoring at all times to remain cognizant of both Russian and Western views of Bakhtin. The essayists' interactions attest to the productivity of any thoughtful encounter with Bakhtin's work and to the transformational nature of his work's impact on the myriad disciplines that it affects. Bakhtin's thought exerted a profound, systemic influence on many areas of knowledge as they have been configured in the twentieth century and, as this volume amply demonstrates, promises to do the same for the twenty-first. (shrink)
Richard Harland provides a lucid account of all the major movements in literary theory up to the late 1960s. In a lucid and accessible style, he unfolds a comprehensive "story" of literary theory in all its manifestations. Because contemporary literary theory depends heavily upon European thinkers, the book has an international focus, and its coverage extends from philosophers to social theorists to linguists. Harland explains the essential principles of each theoretical position, looking behind particular critical judgments and interpretations in order (...) to convey a core grasp of underlying positions. (shrink)
From Romanticism to Critical Theory explores the philosophical roots of literary theory through the traditions of German philosophy that started with the Romantic reactions to Kant. Andrew Bowie traces the continuation of the Romantic tradition, culminating in Heidegger's approaches to art and truth, the work of Adorno and Benjamin and the Frankfurt School's Critical Theory.
0. Between Literary Theory and a General Poetics 0.1. A Methodological Assessment of Modern Literary Theory. The Starting Point: A Conflictive Present At ...
Offers a through examination of the philosophy of literature, looking at the place of literature in human culture, what literature can be defined as and much more.
Placing readings of early modern painting and literature in conversation with psychoanalytic theory and assemblage theory, this book argues that, far from isolating its sufferers, melancholy brings people together.
Though it is inter-disciplinary in scope, situated as it is on the borderlines of ontology and logic, philosophy of literature and theory of language, Ingarden's work has a deliberately narrow focus: the literary work, its structure and ...
This anthology of classic and cutting-edge statements in literary theory has now been updated to include recent influential texts in the areas of Ethnic Studies, Postcolonialism and International Studies. A definitive collection of classic statements in criticism and new theoretical work from the past few decades. All the major schools and methods that make up the dynamic field of literary theory are represented, from Formalism to Postcolonialism. Enables students to familiarise themselves with the most recent developments in literary theory and (...) with the traditions from which these new theories derive. (shrink)
Rhetorical ethos and dramatic theory -- Syntax, style, and ethos -- The worth of words -- Memory and ethos -- Shaw, ethos, and rhetorical wit -- Athol Fugard's dramatic rhetoric -- Rhetoric and silence in Holocaust drama.
Machine generated contents note: Images of Chaos: An Introduction * Tactic I: Desertion (chaotic movement) * First Annihilation: Fall of Being, Burial of the Real * Tactic II: Contagion (chaotic transmission) * Second Annihilation: Betrayal, Fracture, and the Poetic Edge * Tactic III: Shadow-Becoming (chaotic appearance) * Chaos-Consciousness: Towards Blindness * Tactic IV: The Inhuman (chaotic incantation) * Epilogue: Corollaries of Emergence.
By examining in particular Augustan notions of probability and the way they provided a framework for thinking about and organising experience, Dr Patey ...
In this study, Levin explores Plato's engagement with the Greek literary tradition in his treatment of key linguistic issues. This investigation, conjoined with a new interpretation of the Republic's familiar critique of poets, supports the view that Plato's work represents a valuable precedent for contemporary reflections on ways in which philosophy might benefit from appeals to literature.
The language theory of Mikhail Bakhtin does not fall neatly under any single rubric - 'dialogism,' 'marxism,' 'prosaics,' 'authorship' - because the philosophic foundation of his writing rests ambivalently between phenomenology and Marxism. The theoretical tension of these positions creates philosophical impasses in Bakhtin's work, which have been neglected or ignored partly because these impasses are themselves mirrored by the problems of antifoundationalist and materialist tendencies in literary scholarship. In Mikhail Bakhtin: Between Phenomenology and Marxism Michael Bernard-Donals examines various incarnations (...) of phenomenological and materialist theory - including the work of Jauss, Fish, Rorty, Althusser, and Pecheux - and places them beside Bakhtin's work, providing a contextualised study of Bakhtin, a critique of the problems of contemporary critics, and an original contribution to literary theory. (shrink)
William Walker's original analysis of John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding offers a challenging and provocative assessment of Locke's importance as a thinker, bridging the gap between philosophical and literary-critical discussion of his work. He presents Locke as a foundational figure who defines the epistemological and ontological ground on which eighteenth-century and Romantic literature operate and eventually diverge. He is revealed as a crucial figure for emerging modernity, less the familiar empiricist innovator and more the proto-Nietzschean thinker whose (...) text fosters hitherto unsuspected instabilities and promotes a new kind of rhetorical force to counterbalance them. Walker's reading of Locke is at once finely attentive to the text and engagingly resourceful in placing the Essay in its broadest philosophical and historical context. (shrink)
This is a broad interdisciplinary and comparative study of the ways in which we discursively 'make' the world and its things. The author goes beyond the 'poetic thinking' of Heidegger toward a more pragmatic way of interpreting concrete social, cultural, and political experience. The author outlines three constitutive functions of world-making. Endowing signifies the direct provision of the 'wherewithal' that must come into being if anything else is to come into being. Enabling develops or facilitates what is endowed. Entitling embraces (...) the realm of justice and decision; it concerns what it is right for human beings to have and do and be. Placing these functions in contemporary contexts, the book offers as an alternative some perspectives of American pragmatism and continental philosophy. The book closely examines the thinking of Hobbes, Descartes, Vico, Calderón, and Jefferson and several literary figures and thinkers. (shrink)
The "only pretension, of which I am tenacious," wrote Hazlitt, "is that of being a metaphysician"; but his metaphysics, and particularly what this book identifies as his power principle, has until now been neglected. This exciting book studies Hazlitt's development of the power principle as a counter to the pleasure principle of the Utilitarians, and examines the revelation of power in his philosophy of discourse, his account of imaginative structure, his theory of genius, and his moral theory.
Originally published in 1988, this book provides a comprehensive anthology in English of the major texts of German literary and aesthetic theory between Lessing ...
For this edition, Sir Ernest Barker's fine translation, which has been widely used for nearly half a century, has been extensively revised to meet the needs of the modern reader.
The Marquis de Sade's books have been censored in many countries. He is notorious for his forbidden novels like The 120 Days of Sodom and Justine, Juliette . The Marquis de Sade has long been considered the archetypal pornographer. The Philosophy of the Marquis de Sade challenges these traditional interpretations by reading de Sade and his books philosophically. Airaksinen examines de Sade's claim that in order to be truly happy and free we must perform evil acts. The Sadeian hero leads (...) a life filled with perverted and extreme pleasures such as rape, murder, stealing and blasphemy. This Sadeian hero creates impossible situations and contradictions which lead to the tearing apart of reality. Through this gap he or she can discharge and experience the ultimate pleasures of disappearing into a void. Thus, Airaksinen argues that Sade is a philosopher on a performative level of evil, pain and perversion. Secondary sources on de Sade such as Hobbes, Erasmus and Brillat-Savarin are analyzed as are contemporary studies on de Sade's life and work. This book is of immense value to all those interested in de Sade and his work and who may not have been able to complete readings of his long, violent and repetitive texts. (shrink)
Maurice Blanchot, the eminent literary and cultural critic, has had a vast influence on contemporary French writers—among them Jean Paul Sartre and Jacques Derrida. From the 1930s through the present day, his writings have been shaping the international literary consciousness. The Space of Literature , first published in France in 1955, is central to the development of Blanchot's thought. In it he reflects on literature and the unique demand it makes upon our attention. Thus he explores the process (...) of reading as well as the nature of artistic creativity, all the while considering the relation of the literary work to time, to history, and to death. This book consists not so much in the application of a critical method or the demonstration of a theory of literature as in a patiently deliberate meditation upon the literary experience, informed most notably by studies of Mallarme;, Kafka, Rilke, and Hölderlin. Blanchot's discussions of those writers are among the finest in any language. (shrink)
Creativity: Theory, History, Practice offers important new perspectives on creativity in the light of contemporary critical theory and cultural history. Innovative in approach as well as argument, the book crosses disciplinary boundaries and builds new bridges between the critical and the creative. It is organized in four parts: · Why creativity now? offers much-needed alternatives to both the Romantic stereotype of the creator as individual genius and the tendency of the modern creative industries to treat everything as a commodity. · (...) Defining creativity, creating definitions traces the changing meaning of "create" from religious ideas of divine creation from nothing to advertising notions of concept creation. It also examines the complex history and extraordinary versatility of terms such as imagination, invention, inspiration and originality. · Creation as myth, story, metaphor begins with modern re-telling of early African, American and Australian creation myths and -picking up Biblical and evolutionary accounts along the way - works round to scientific visions of the Big Bang, bubble universes and cosmic soup. · Creative practices, cultural processes is a critical anthology of materials, chosen to promote fresh thinking about everything from changing constructions of "literature" and "design" to artificial intelligence and genetic engineering. Rob Pope takes significant steps forward in the process of rethinking a vexed yet vital concept, all the while encouraging and equipping readers to continue the process in their own creative or "re-creative" ways. Creativity: Theory, History, Practice is invaluable for anyone with a live interest in exploring what creativity has been, is currently, and yet may be. (shrink)
Those concerned with Locke’s Essay have largely ignored his account of reflection. I present and defend an interpretation of Locke’s theory of reflection on which reflection is not a variety of introspection; rather, for Locke, we acquire ideas of our mental operations indirectly. Furthermore, reflection is involuntary and distinct from consciousness. The interpretation I present also explains reflection’s role in the acquisition of non-sensory ideas (e.g., ideas of pleasure, existence, succession, etc.). I situate this reading within the secondary literature (...) on reflection and discuss its consequences for interpretations of Locke’s views on empiricism, knowledge, and personal identity. -/- -/- . (shrink)
Introduction.--Literary history and tradition: Eliot, T. S. Tradition and the individual talent. Trilling, L. The sense of the past. Hassan, I. H. The problem of influence in literary history.--An aesthetics of origins and revisionism: Guillen, C. The aesthetics of literary influence. Block, H. M. The concept of influence in comparative literature. Bloom, H. Clinamen, or poetic misprision. Bate, W. J. The second temple.--Reader as participant: Rosenblatt, L. M. Towards a transactional theory of reading. Holland, N. N. Literature as (...) transformation. Fish, S. E. Literature in the reader. (shrink)
Rhetoric and philosophy both constituted the main elements of literary education in the Greco-Roman world of the second century A.D. The present study deals with the relationship between both disciplines in Second Sophistic literature: Did ...
Causal pluralism is the view that causation is not a single kind of relation or connection between things in the world. Instead, the apparently simple and univocal term "cause" is seen as masking an underlying diversity. Assessing such a claim requires making sense of a difficult counting operation. How do we tell whether a theory of causation is identifying causation with a "single" kind of connection? In practice, there tends not to be much disagreement about how to do the counting, (...) because most philosophical work on causation has sought a view with an obvious kind of unity. The literature often works with a standard range of candidate connections that seem to have an important link to the idea of causation. These include natural laws, de facto regularities, counterfactual dependence, probabilistic dependence, and some others. It has been common in philosophy to pick one of these and try to make sense of causation entirely in those terms. The candidate chosen is seen as either fundamental to our thinking about the world, a fundamental ingredient of the world itself, or both. Against that background, it is an unorthodox move to say that all such unified 1 treatments of causation are mistaken; causation is, with respect to the ingredients recognized as distinct options in philosophical practice, irreducibly plural or diverse. Appropriately, causal pluralism comes in several kinds. The main focus of this survey is a collection of recent treatments that directly oppose the kind of unity seen in traditional analyses. The simplest kind of pluralism treats our ordinary talk of causation as shifting between two distinct "concepts" of cause (section 3). This view posits an ambiguity that could be resolved if each concept was given a different name. Another suggestion is that we have a single concept of causation, but one whose use is guided by what Brian Skyrms called an "amiable jumble" of criteria that sometimes work together and sometimes pull apart (section 4). Those two options use traditional philosophical raw materials to make sense of causation (regularities, counterfactuals, etc.) but put them to work in unorthodox ways.. (shrink)
