Philosophy of Literature: An Introduction
Christopher New
Language: English
Pages: 151
ISBN: B000FA5YEW
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Literature, like the visual arts, poses its own philosophical problems. While literary theorists have discussed the nature of literature intensively, analytic philosophers have usually dealt with literary problems either within the general framework of aesthetics or else in a way that is accessible only to a philosophical audience. The present book is unique in that it introduces the philosophy of literature from an analytic perspective accessible to both 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
the nature of fiction and our emotional involvement with fictional characters
the concept of imagination and its role in the apprehension of literary works
theories of metaphor and postmodernist theory on the significance of the authors' intentions to the interpretationof their work
an examination of the relevance of thruth and morality to literary appreciation
Lucid and well organised and free from jargon,
hilosophy of Literature: An Introduction offers fresh approaches to traditional problems and raises new issues in the philosophy of literature.
Homonymously to a writing instrument, a cattle enclosure and a female swan – three things that have nothing whatsoever in common by virtue of which the term is applied to them. For, though there would be no single property common to all literary discourses, by virtue of which they 19 WHAT I S L I T E R AT U R E ? D E F I N I T I O N S , R E S E M B L A N C E S were literary discourses, there might be certain properties which some shared with others, while those others had additional properties.
Actually a stage and some bits of machinery is an island, and that someone painted and dressed up and reciting words is Prospero or Ariel or Miranda. We undergo the illusion that these things are so – the author, director, stage-designers and actors produce, with our co-operation, the illusion that they are. We do see an actor as Prospero, we do see an actress as Miranda, and another actor as Caliban, just as we do see the straight stick half-immersed in water as bent. We know that this is an.
Since it was not generally believed in Tolstoy’s time and society that Pluto existed, we could say it was not true in the novel that Pluto existed undiscovered. Also for Homer: since in Homer’s society it was believed neither that Pluto existed nor that the world was round, it is not true in 112 L I T E R AT U R E , T R U T H A N D M O R A L I T Y The Iliad that Pluto existed undiscovered or even that, although nobody knew it, the world was round. The fictional world, in other words, would be.
Of appraisal: Kant’s analysis We make many different kinds of appraisals of literary works, as we do of paintings, sculpture, music, food, wine, people, actions and just about everything else. Sometimes we pass a general verdict that the work is good or bad, at other times we commend or discommend some particular aspect of the work – saying it is elegant or crude, sentimental or moving, restrained or colourless, profound or portentous, eloquent or bombastic. Some of these more specific appraisals.
Graphic dimensions of 6–8; definitions of see definitions of literature; and imagination 76–80; and morality 120–3; oral and written 5–8; and translation 17; and truth 108–20 ‘literature’, uses of 3–4 literary value: 4: and morality 120–3; subjectivity of 130–3; and truth 114–20 literary works: copies and originals 14–17; erotic 61; identity of 14–15; as metaphors 81, 94–5; as moral or immoral 121–2; as true or false 114–6 locutionary acts 25 make-believe: 55; and belief and conception 62; and.