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This monumental collection of new and recent essays represents the best contemporary critical thinking concerning the philosophical study of literature.
List of contents
Notes on Contributors viii
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction 1
Garry L. Hagberg and Walter Jost
Part I Relations between Philosophy and Literature 5
1 Philosophy as Literature and More than Literature 7
Richard Shusterman
2 Philosophy and Literature: Friends of the Earth? 22
Roger A. Shiner
3 Philosophy and Literature - and Rhetoric: Adventures in Polytopia 38
Walter Jost
4 Philosophy and/as/of Literature 52
Arthur C. Danto
Part II Emotional Engagement and the Experience of Reading 69
5 Emotion and the Understanding of Narrative 71
Jenefer Robinson
6 Feeling Fictions 93
Roger Scruton
7 The Experience of Reading 106
Peter Kivy
8 Self-Defining Reading: Literature and the Constitution of Personhood 120
Garry L. Hagberg
Part III Philosophy, Tragedy, and Literary Form 159
9 Tragedy and Philosophy 161
Anthony J. Cascardi
10 Iago's Elenchus: Shakespeare, Othello, and the Platonic Inheritance 174
M. W. Rowe
11 Catharsis 193
Jonathan Lear
12 Passion, Counter-Passion, Catharsis: Flaubert (and Beckett) on Feeling Nothing 218
Joshua Landy
Part IV Literature and the Moral Life 239
13 Perceptive Equilibrium: Literary Theory and Ethical Theory 241
Martha C. Nussbaum
14 Henry James, Moral Philosophers, Moralism 268
Cora Diamond
15 Literature and the Idea of Morality 285
Eileen John
16 Styles of Self-Absorption 300
Daniel Brudney
Part V Narrative and the Question of Literary Truth 329
17 Narration, Imitation, and Point of View 331
Gregory Currie
18 How and What We Can Learn from Fiction 350
Mitchell Green
19 Literature and Truth 367
Peter Lamarque
20 Truth in Poetry: Particulars and Universals 385
Richard Eldridge
Part VI Intention and Biography in Criticism 399
21 Authorial Intention and the Varieties of Intentionalism 401
Paisley Livingston
22 Art as Techne, or, The Intentional Fallacy and the Unfinished Project of Formalism 420
Henry Staten
23 Biography in Literary Criticism 436
Stein Haugom Olsen
24 Getting Inside Heisenberg's Head 453
Ray Monk
Part VII On Literary Language 465
25 Wittgenstein and Literary Language 467
Jon Cook and Rupert Read
26 Exemplification and Expression 491
Charles Altieri
27 At Play in the Fields of Metaphor 507
Ted Cohen
28 Macbeth Appalled 521
Stanley Cavell
Index 541
About the author
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).
Summary
This volume in the Blackwell Companions to Philosophy series focuses on the main themes and topics in the philosophy of literature. It is composed of all newly commissioned essays, written by the top scholars in the field. Note: I received a lot of advice on this project over several iterations.
