A Companion to the Philosophy of Literature

by Hagberg, Garry L.; Jost, Walter

• ISBN13: 9781405141703
• ISBN10: 1405141700
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-02-01
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

This monumental collection of new and recent essays from an international team of eminent scholars represents the best contemporary critical thinking relating to both literary and philosophical studies of literature. Helpfully groups essays into the field's main sub-categories, among them 'Relations Between Philosophy and Literature', 'Emotional Engagement and the Experience of Reading', 'Literature and the Moral Life', and 'Literary Language' Offers a combination of analytical precision and literary richness Represents an unparalleled work of reference for students and specialists alike, ideal for course use

Author Biography

Garry L. Hagberg is the James H. Ottaway Professor of Philosophy and Aesthetics at Bard College, and has in recent years held a Chair in the School of Philosophy at the University of East Anglia and a visiting fellowship at Cambridge University. He has published widely in philosophical and literary contexts; his recent books include Art and Ethical Criticism (Blackwell, 2008) and Describing Ourselves: Wittgenstein and Autobiographical Consciousness (2008). He is joint editor of the journal Philosophy and Literature.

Walter Jost is Professor of English at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Rhetorical Thought in John Henry Newman (1989) and Rhetorical Investigations (2004), and has edited or co-edited six previous books, including (with Wendy Olmsted) A Companion to Rhetoric and Rhetorical Criticism (Blackwell, 2004).

Table of Contents

Notes on Contributors

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Relations between Philosophy and Literature

Philosophy as Literature and More than Literature

Philosophy and Literature: Friends of the Earth?

Philosophy and Literature and Rhetoric: Adventures in Polytopia

Philosophy and/as/of Literature

Emotional Engagement and the Experience of Reading:

Emotion and the Understanding of Narrative

Feeling Fictions

The Experience of Reading

Self-Defining Reading: Literature and the Constitution of Personhood

Philosophy, Tragedy, and Literary Form

Tragedy and Philosophy

Iagos Elenchus: Shakespeare, Othello, and the Platonic Inheritance

Catharsis

Passion, Counter-Passion, Catharsis: Flaubert (and Beckett) on Feeling Nothing

Literature and the Moral Life:

Perceptive Equilibrium: Literary Theory and Ethical Theory

Henry James, Moral Philosophers, Moralism

Literature and the Idea of Morality

Styles of Self-Absorption

Narrative and the Question of Literary Truth

Narration, Imitation, and Point of View

How and What We Can Learn From Fiction

Literature and Truth

Truth in Poetry: Particulars and Universals

Intention and Biography in Criticism

Authorial Intention and the Varieties of Intentionalism

Art as Techne, or, the Intentional Fallacy and the Unfinished Project of Formalism

Biography in Literary Criticism

Getting Inside Heisenbergs Head

On Literary Language

Wittgenstein and Literary Language

Exemplification and Expression

At Play in the Fields of Metaphor

Macbeth Appalled

Index

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