Aesthetics and literature: A problematic relation?

Philosophical Studies 135 (1):27 - 40 (2007)
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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.

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Peter Lamarque
University of York

References found in this work

Aesthetic Concepts.Frank Sibley - 1959 - Philosophical Review 68 (4):421-450.
Truth, fiction, and literature: a philosophical perspective.Peter Lamarque & Stein Haugom Olsen - 1994 - New York: Oxford University Press. Edited by Stein Haugom Olsen.
Values of art: pictures, poetry, and music.Malcolm Budd - 1995 - New York, N.Y.: Penguin Books.
Art, intention, and conversation.Noël Carroll - 1992 - In Gary Iseminger (ed.), Intention and interpretation. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. pp. 97--131.

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