“Think of our world,” writes Robert Nozick, “as a novel in which you yourself are a character.” As we shall see, this is easier said than done. In that case, would the project be worth the effort? Yes, says Alexander Nehamas. In Nietzsche: Life as Literature, Nehamas suggests that we would have a better grasp of some hard doctrines of Nietzsche's, if we accepted literary texts as providing a model for the world, and literary characters as yielding (...) models of ourselves. The idea is intriguing, in part because Nietzsche presents difficulties, and in part because it has some of the alluring obscurity of Nozick's playful charge. In what follows, however, I shall argue that Nehamas's proposals about Nietzsche and literature are not particularly helpful, that Nietzsche's doctrines remain hard to grasp even after we have considered the nature of literary texts, and that Nehamas himself is misled by ambiguities connected with literary characters and the fictional worlds they inhabit. (shrink)

This paper is focused on the abstractist theory of fictional discourse, namely, the semantic theory according to which fictional names refer to abstract entities. Two semantic problems that arise in relation to that position are analysed: the first is the problem of accounting for the intuitive truth of typically fictive uses of statements containing fictional names; the second is the one of explaining some problematic metafictive uses, in particular, the use of intuitively true negative existentials.Este artículo se ocupa de la (...) teoría abstracta del discurso de ficción, a saber, la teoría semántica según la cual los nombres de ficción refieren a entidades abstractas. Se analizan dos problemas semánticos que surgen en relación con esta posición: el primero es el problema de dar cuenta de la verdad intuitiva de usos típicamente fictivos de enunciados que contienen nombres de ficción; el segundo es el de explicar algunos usos metafictivos problemáticos, en particular el uso de existenciales negativos intuitivamente verdaderos. (shrink)

This article offers a new account of Leo Strauss’s interpretation of Maimonides’ esoteric teaching in the Guide for the Perplexed, which Strauss offers in his seminal essay ‘The Literary Character of the Guide for the Perplexed.’ According to the generally-accepted view, for Strauss, Maimonides’ esoteric teaching is the identity of the secrets of the Torah with Aristotelian philosophy, and—since that philosophy contradicts the foundational beliefs of the Torah—that the Torah has the merely instrumental function of bringing about political well-being. (...) By contrast, I argue that, for Strauss, Maimonides’ esoteric teaching is the necessity of breaking the laws of the Torah for the sake of restoring Israel’s sovereignty. Additionally, I claim that Strauss’s interpretation depends on Carl Schmitt’s ‘decisionism.’. (shrink)

I argue that the ontological status of fictional characters is determined by the beliefs and practices of those who competently deal with works of literature, and draw out three important consequences of this. First, heavily revisionary theories cannot be considered as ‘discoveries’ about the ‘true nature’ of fictional characters; any acceptable realist theory of fiction must preserve all or most of the common conception of fictional characters. Second, once we note that the existence conditions for fictional (...) class='Hi'>characters are extremely minimal, it makes little sense to deny the existence of fictional characters, leaving anti-realist views of fiction unmotivated. Finally, the role of ordinary beliefs and practices in determining facts about the ontology of fictional characters explains why non-revisionary theories of fiction are bound to yield no determinate or precise answer to certain questions about fictional characters, demonstrating the limits of a theory of fiction. (shrink)

En filosofía, la imagen ha solido ligarse al problema del conocimiento como elemento exterior a la verdad. Una perspectiva distinta no la somete a criterios lógicos, sino que indaga sus potenciales teóricos y prácticos. Se estudia la estructura interna de la idea de imagen tal como la reconstruye Maurice Blanchot en la experiencia literaria. Se muestra su vinculación a un carácter "aurático" que expone la lectura a una experiencia de distanciamiento crítico respecto de sus presupuestos no tematizados en su participación (...) dentro de las formaciones culturales. The image has been usually bound to the problem of knowledge as an element which is external to the true. Another line of reflection does not submit it to logical criteria, instead it enquires about its theoretical and practical potentials. In this paper we study the internal structure of the idea of the image as reconstructed by Maurice Blanchot within literary experience. We will show the idea of the literary image as bound to an "auratic" character which exposes reading to an experience of critical self-disclosure of the non thematized assumptions in their participation within cultural formations. (shrink)

The early 20th century marked a transformative period in China’s socio-cultural landscape, characterized by profound political, economic, and cultural changes. This study offers a philosophical inquiry into the social psychology and moral identity of character groups in Lao She’s literary works through data-driven psychological analysis. Employing insights from big data and artificial intelligence, the research examines how personality traits in literary characters reflect broader societal values and existential struggles of the time. Findings indicate distinct gender-based differences in (...) personality traits and subjective well-being. Characters display higher levels of agreeableness, openness, and neuroticism, coupled with lower extroversion and moderate conscientiousness. Neuroticism negatively correlates with well-being, while conscientiousness, agreeableness, extroversion, and openness positively influence it. These traits symbolize the societal psyche’s response to rapid modernization and cultural upheaval. The study highlights the philosophical relevance of using literary narratives as reflective mirrors of human experience, offering fresh perspectives on existential identity, moral agency, and collective consciousness within the evolving socio-historical context. (shrink)

It is not possible to face a text and announce "I shall now talk about character" in the same way that one might say "I shall now talk about plot" or "metaphor." For several reasons—not least of which is the absence of a thoughtful critical tradition—character is much more difficult to talk about than most other literary concepts. Most of what has been written on the subject of character, whether in recent years or in the distant past, can be (...) seen to come under one of four possible headings. I do not think of these classifications as being mutually exclusive, although the emphasis upon one aspect of the problem of character probably tends to pull one towards a definite position. Briefly, these positions are: that characters are products of the author's mind—memories, encapsulations of his experience or else split-off slivers of his mind or self; that characters are functions of the text in which they appear—embodiments of theme and idea—to be considered much as tokens, pieces, or counters in a game; that characters are entirely artificial, constructs to be analyzed in terms of the compositional techniques that have gone into their making; that characters are, for the purposes of critical reading, to be considered as if they were actual persons, and the emphasis in criticism—its sole business, in fact—to discuss the response they engender in an intelligent reader. Rawdon Wilson, associate professor of English at the University of Alberta, has written widely on English and Spanish literature. His previous contribution to Critical Inquiry, "On Character: A Reply to Martin Price," appeared in the Autumn 1975 issue. The present essay was originally presented in an earlier form at the University of Melbourne and at the University of Alberta. (shrink)

This article is a reaction to the following argument that has been offered in favor of abstract realism about fictional characters: fictional characters do not impose any extra ontological cost on our ontology, because they belong to the same ontological kind as literary works, which we already accept. I address arguments that have been adduced by Jeffrey Goodman in defense of this argument, and I show that there is no relevant parallelism between fictional entities and literary (...) works that the abstract fictional realist can use to bolster her theory. (shrink)

This book attempts to bridge the gulf that still exists between 'literary' and 'philosophical' interpreters of Plato by looking at his use of characterization. Characterization is intrinsic to dramatic form and a concern with human character in an ethical sense pervades the dialogues on the discursive level. Form and content are further reciprocally related through Plato's discursive preoccupation with literary characterization. Two opening chapters examine the methodological issues involved in reading Plato 'as drama' and a set of questions (...) surrounding Greek 'character' words, including ancient Greek views about the influence of dramatic character on an audience. The figure of Sokrates qua Platonic 'hero' also receives preliminary discussion. The remaining chapters offer close readings of select dialogues, chosen to show the wide range of ways in which Plato uses his characters, with special emphasis on the kaleidoscopic figure of Sokrates and on Plato's own relationship to his 'dramatic' hero. (shrink)

It is a truth universally acknowledged that great works of literature have an impact on people's lives. Well known literary characters—Oedipus, Hamlet, Faustus, Don Quixote—acquire iconic or mythic status and their stories, in more or less detail, are revered and recalled often in contexts far beyond the strictly literary. At the level of national literatures, familiar characters and plots are assimilated into a wider cultural consciousness and help define national stereotypes and norms of behaviour. In the (...) English speaking world, Shakespeare's plays or the novels of Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, Dickens, and Trollope, provide imaginative material that reverberates in people's lives every bit as much as do the great historical figures, like Julius Caesar, Elizabeth I, Horatio Nelson, or Winston Churchill. What is striking is how often fictional characters from the literary tradition—like the well-loved Elizabeth Bennett, Jane Eyre, Oliver Twist, Pip, Tess of the d'Ubervilles—enter readers' lives at a highly personal level. They become, as Martha Nussbaum puts it, our ‘friends’, and for many readers the lives of these characters become closely entwined with their own. Happy and unhappy incidents in the fictional worlds are held up against similar incidents in the real lives of readers and such readers take inspiration from the courage, ingenuity, or good fortune of their fictional heroines and heroes. Nowhere is it more true that life imitates art. (shrink)

Literary cognitivists claim that works of literature can have a significant cognitive value and can be effective in providing readers with opportunities for learning. Anti-cognitivists challenge cognitivists by questioning how literature can offer arguments or evidence for readers’ adoption of new knowledge or understanding. As a mode of side-stepping these objections, cognitivists have recently tended to make their claims more modest and claim only that literature clarifies knowledge readers already possess or provides the opportunity for the development of certain (...) general cognitive skills. In this chapter, I put forward a more bold account of literature’s cognitive value. I argue that a reader’s engagement with a literary work can lead to reconfiguration of their understanding of the subject matter with which the work deals. This bolder defence of literature’s cognitive value, and the account I offer of how readers can access such cognitive value, indicate how literature can form a significant part of character education. (shrink)

The characters in a story can function as vehicles that carry the message that the implied author intends to convey to the implied readers as they read the story. Characterisation is, as it were, the artistry the implied author uses to shift the intended reader’s worldview. Whilst there have been many insightful scholarly contributions on Susanna, the use of character focalisation and its possible function have never been explored. It remains open for investigation. This article examines the way in (...) which characters are focalised in Susanna and how their role contributes to the implied reader’s ability to grasp the possible intended message of the story. The article concludes that focalisation offers a useful interpretive angle from which Susanna can be studied.Contribution: The article proves that characterisation and the narrator’s role in the story are not a literary decoration to the text but a well-intended process that aims at inviting participation and decision-making from the implied reader. (shrink)

Excerpt from Essays, Literary, Moral and Political Some people are subject to a certain delicacy of passion, which makes them extremely sensible to all the accidents of life, and gives them a lively joy upon every prosperous event, as well as a piercing grief, when they meet with misfortunes and adversity. Favours and good offices easily engage their friendship while the smallest injury provokes their resentment. Any honour or mark of distinction elevates them above measure; but they are as (...) sensibly touched with contempt. People of this character have, no doubt, more lively enjoyments, as well as more pungent sorrows, than men of cool and sedate tempers but, I believe, when everything is balanced, there is no one, who would not rather be of the latter character, were he entirely master of his own disposition. Good or ill fortune Is very little at our disposal: and when a pe_r_son. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

This book is about the interaction between literary studies and the philosophy of literature. It features essays from internationally renowned and emerging philosophers and literary scholars, challenging readers to join them in taking seriously the notion of interdisciplinary study and forging forward in new and exciting directions of thought. It identifies that literary studies and the philosophy of literature address similar issues: What is literature? What is its value? Why do I care about characters? What is (...) the role of the author in understanding a literary work? What is fiction as opposed to non-fiction? Yet, genuine, interdisciplinary interaction remains scarce. This collection seeks to overcome current obstacles and seek out new paths for exploration. (shrink)

If there are no fictional characters, how do we explain thought and discourse apparently about them? If there are, what are they like? A growing number of philosophers claim that fictional characters are abstract objects akin to novels or plots. They argue that postulating characters provides the most straightforward explanation of our literary practices as well as a uniform account of discourse and thought about fiction. Anti-realists counter that postulation is neither necessary nor straightforward, and that (...) the invocation of pretense provides a better account of the same phenomena. I outline and assess these competing theories. (shrink)

Literature is a complex and multifaceted expression of our humanity, one dimension of which is ethical content. This striking collection of new essays pursues a fuller and richer understanding of five of the central aspects of this ethical content. These aspects are: the question of character, its formation, and its role in moral discernment; poetic vision in the context of ethical understanding; literature's distinctive role in self-identity and self-understanding; patterns of moral growth and change that emerge from the philosophical reading (...) of literature; and the historical sources and genealogies of some of our most central contemporary conceptions of the ethical dimension of literature. The volume engages with literary work from Homer to J. M. Coetzee, Shakespeare to David Foster Wallace, and explores the philosophy of Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Kant, Hegel, Freud, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Levinas, and others. This rich collection presents some of the best new thinking about the ethical content that lies within literature, and it shows why our reflective absorption in literature is the humane--and humanizing--experience many of us have long taken it to be. (shrink)

This paper looks at how digital humanities can modify our more traditional understanding and conceptualisation of literary characters. Through the analysis of cast lists from more than 880 French plays from 1630 to 1810, and the “close reading” of some sample texts, it proposes a classification of units of characterisation that can be identified in plays. In the last part, the paper sketches a protocol for the encoding of these characters in a TEI conformant way, and discusses (...) the advantages and the drawbacks of such an endeavour. (shrink)

In "Literary Variation of Indian Buddhist Stories in Chinese 志怪 Novels," Wei Guo discusses Buddhist Sutra scriptures which have been a reservoir of inspiration for Zhiguai novels since their first introduction in Chinese literature. Buddhist texts were less relevant for the "documentary" tradition of Chinese literature owing to their rough structure, vague context, and lack of a sense of history and reality, since they were originally intended as texts of didacticism. Hence, in order to integrate these exotic literary (...) materials with local aesthetic concepts, Chinese writers explored creative adaptations including the addition of adding detail, linguistic embellishments, and the endowment of each story with specific narrative scenes in terms of character, place, and time. Guo argues that Indian Buddhist stories have been remolded in Zhiguai novels and transformed from imaginary religious literature into figurative and documentary literature whereby the convergence of the source texts with the target texts shows the processes of formation of world literature. (shrink)

In a paper presented at a symposium on structuralism at the Johns Hopkins University in 1968, the historian Charles Morazé analyzed the issue of invention largely with reference to mathematics and the theory of Henri Poincare.1 Poincare, along with the physiologist Hermann von Helmholtz, was the first to put forward a theory of scientific discovery as occurring in discrete phases. In 1926, Joseph Wallas generalized this theory to apply to all creativity, positing phrases which closely resemble those of Morazé. While (...) both Poincare and Wallas use a four-phrase model of invention, Morazé reduces his to three phrases: information, cogitation, and intellection. In information, the inventor becomes familiar with the sign systems and knowledge, the "collective contributions of society," relevant to his field of problems. Cogitation assembles these materials and concentrates them until "a certain moment" when "a light breaks through." This "sudden illumination...forces us to insist upon the neurological character" of the inventive moment. Finally, in intellection, the inventor rationally evaluates the utility of his invention and thus, in a sense, steps outside of himself and rejoins society. The distinction which organizes Morazé 's entire account, as well as most of the discussion that followed his presentation, is between the "collective" support and control of the inventor and his own individual, or "neurological," act of synthesis or creation. · 1. See Charles Morazé 's "Literary Invention," in The Structuralist Controversy: The Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man, ed. Richard Macksey and Eugenio Donato, pp. 22-55. Loy D. Martin is an assistant professor of English at the University of Chicago. He has written The Language of Invention, a study of Robert Browning and the genesis of the dramatic monologue. "A Reply to Carl Pletsch and Richard Schiff" appeared in the Spring 1981 issue of Critical Inquiry. (shrink)

This study focuses on the question of individualism in the works of Marcel Proust and Jean-Paul Sartre, particularly with regard to the issue of ethical and political selfhood. If there is to be a fruitful interaction between descriptive narrative ethics and proscriptive ethical theory, the role of the literary imagination needs to be reassessed. The resurging interest in redefining the humanist project begs the question of why exponents of individual liberty and group authority remain firmly opposed to one another. (...) Therefore the analysis begins with a consideration of Sartre's failure to produce a formal system of ethics consistent with his early ontology. Sartre's account of subjectivity is framed within recent reevaluations of ethical individualism in the philosophy of Soren Kierkegaard and Emmanuel Levinas in order to demonstrate that Sartrean existentialism is ethically flawed. It is therefore argued that it is his theory of subjectivity which precludes an existentialist-Marxist alliance--the alliance itself deriving promise from a refinement of the existential position. In posing the question of whether Proust defines a theory of the self or elucidates one of an infinite number of individual paths to an authentic self-relation, I reveal that his emphasis on 'la vie interieure' is not excessive or idealistic individualism but rather ethico-political sobriety. According to Sartre, the novelist's sole purpose should be to present, without any form of edification which could translate to proselytism, the passions and actions of the characters. However, his emphasis on action neglects certain aspects of authorial intervention. When Proust's narrator, through the intricate exploration of his own self-relation, invites the reader to embark on the same journey of self-transformation, the novel becomes a site for experimental selfhood. By addressing these issues, I illuminate the difficulties Sartre faced in attempting to unite a Marxist ethos with the primacy of the individual as well as challenge Richard Rorty's characterization of Proust's literary project as a "purely private act of self-creation.". (shrink)

The paper proposes a radical change of focus for understanding the fundamental purpose and value of literary interpretation. It criticises an orthodox view in analytical philosophy of literature, according to which theories of meaning in the philosophy of language, in particular Gricean or speech act or other pragmatic theories, offer the most illuminating way to grasp the relevant principles of interpretation. The argument here is that the application of such theories in this context is not just wrong in detail (...) (this or that theory needs revising) but wrong in principle. The focus is wrong. The importation of philosophy of language distorts the essential character of interpretation, which should be seen as involving not so much meaning as value, not individual sentences but whole works, not obsessed with authorial intention but focused on the protocols of reading. (shrink)

Neo-Aristotelian forms of character education often draw on literary sources as materials, although rarely poetry. This article offers retrospective reflections on a poetry-based character-education intervention, conducted in an Icelandic secondary-school setting. Having run into practical difficulties during the implementation phase, the challenges of implementation were reflected upon through consultation with ten subject experts who shared their views about the enablers and barriers encountered when running such an intervention. The interviews yielded a rich data set, which often took interviewees beyond (...) the boundaries of a poetry-based curricular context to focus on more general conditions for effective, character-inspiring school-work. Through thematic analysis, four themes were identified: freedom, time, creativity, and wonderment. Of these four, creativity had been identified in advance as an interview theme, meaning that the researchers expected to find it. The remaining three provide an insight into how, according to the interviewees, the ideal Icelandic school system should be designed. The theme of freedom addresses both negative and positive aspects of the current state of affairs, while the theme of time mostly reflects negative aspects of the Icelandic curriculum. The theme of wonderment has solely positive connotations in the minds of interviewees, and is the core of this analysis because it seems to hold the key to the question: what factors would enable an effective intervention of the sort under scrutiny here? This theme is analysed in detail, and some specific and general educational implications are elicited. (shrink)

This experiment examined responses to excerpted episodes from short stories that either focused on action or on the experiences of the characters. The effects of instructional sets to approach the texts from the viewpoint of subjective involvement or objective detachment were also studied. The two story types and two reading sets were factorially combined in a within-subjects design. Scale ratings of the story excerpts and reading times (syllables per second) were measured. A total of subjects (20 males and 20 (...) females) read six segments from each of the episodes as quickly and accurately as possible. Pretest data were obtained for each segment indicating how much it “provided insight into the characters' experiences”, and its level of suspense and surprise. Segments which “provided in sight” were read more slowly, whereas surprising segments were read more quickly. Under the Subjective Set, subjects slowed the pace of reading if they judged the text to be “rich in meaning about life”. For the Objective Set, stories that were judged to have evoked “images” were read more slowly. Females were more responsive to the Subjective Set than were the males, finding the stories to be “richer in meaning” and more “personally relevant”. Females also slowed their reading pace for segments that they judged to be “rich in meaning about life”, while males slowed down if the stories evoked “images”. (shrink)

© British Society of Aesthetics 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Society of Aesthetics. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected] essays collected in Fictional Characters, Real Problems: The Search for Ethical Content in Literature present unique perspectives on the representation of ethical concerns in literature. Edited by Garry L. Hagberg, these essays address different ways that ethical and aesthetic concerns are interwoven in works of long-form literature such as novels and theatrical works. (...) The majority of these essays also support a related claim: due to their long-form nature, these types of literary works provide a reader with ethical perspectives that are both more holistic and nuanced than is possible in typical philosophical thought experiments. Long-form literature affords the time and space to show us the breadth and depth of both our ethical motivations and their consequences.Hagberg has divided this work into... (shrink)

In recent metaphysics, the questions of whether fictional entities exist, what their nature is, and how to explain truths of statements such as “Sherlock Holmes lives at 221B Baker Street” and “Holmes was created by Arthur Conan Doyle” have been subject to much debate. The main aim of my thesis is to wrestle with key proponents of the abstractionist view that fictional entities are abstract objects that exist (van Inwagen 1977, 2018, Thomasson 1999 and Salmon 1998) as well as Walton’s (...) (1990) pretense view, which denies the existence of such entities. In the process, I propose modifications to these views to deal with problems they face and show how the modifications better account for the philosophical data. -/- Key abstractionists (van Inwagen 1977, Thomasson 1999) make a strict distinction between discourse within fiction, in which statements about literary characters cannot be literally true, and discourse about fiction, as it occurs in literary criticism, where statements about fictional characters can be literally true. Fictional objects are postulated to account for the truth of the latter. This runs into trouble because statements thought to be literally true are not literal. (Yagisawa 2001, Friend 2002) I provide a uniform analysis to account for the truth of statements involving fictional characters by appealing to a presupposition involving a metaphor in both contexts. The presupposition is that there is an x such that x is fictional; x is likened to a real person; and x is and ought to be treated/counted as a real person for all relevant intents and purposes. -/- More generally, I adopt Everett and Schroeder’s (2015) realist view that fictional characters are ideas constituted by mental representations. This, to me, better accounts for how fictional characters are created within the world’s causal nexus (unlike non-spatiotemporal entities in abstractionism), among other things. One key challenge they face is to explain how ideas can possess properties such as being a detective. I present a fine-grained version of their view, according to which the mental representations constituting fictional entities encode mind-dependent properties. Moreover, I explain how reference to such representations is possible, using Bencivenga’s (1983) Neo-Kantian view of reference and Karttunen’s (1976) view on discourse referents. Finally, I suggest that the identity of fictional characters is interest-relative. The constant, and sometimes radical, change of properties that, fictional characters can undergo is taken to be a consequence of the fact that unified mental representations are bundles of simpler mental representations. As change occurs, simpler representations are replaced by others. -/- A key theme that runs through the thesis is that neither fictionality nor pretense is relevant to the semantics of fictional sentences—a claim bolstered by Matravers’ (2014) arguments. Whether or not my account works, this claim, as well as the new philosophical data I bring up, are some of the challenges I pose to the heart of established views. (shrink)

Many philosophers have claimed that reading literary fiction makes people more virtuous. This essay begins by defending the view that this claim is empirical. It goes on to review the empirical literature and finds that this literature supports the claim philosophers have made. Three mechanisms are identified whereby reading literary fiction makes people more virtuous: empathy is increased when readers enter imaginatively into the lives of fictional characters; reading literary fiction promotes self-reflection; and readers mimic the (...) prosocial behaviour of fictional characters. The paper concludes with a caution: there is a danger that readers could mimic antisocial behaviour displayed in literary fiction. If they do, reading some literary fiction could make readers less virtuous. (shrink)

A character in a novel pulls a book from a shelf and starts to read about himself in a novel. Puzzling, but what does it really mean? Does it force us to fundamentally reconsider the nature of fiction? Does it turn the novel into a kind of liar's paradox? And what exactly is a liar's paradox, anyway? Does the liar's paradox, despite its name, have anything to do with lying? What, if anything, does the liar's paradox have to tell us (...) about reality, beliefs, and fictional discourse? (shrink)

In this paper, drawing on Husserl, as well as on certain other phenomenologists such as Merleau-Ponty and Richir, I claim that the phenomenon of the apprehension of the perspectives and emotions of literary characters deserves to be called literary empathy. In order to support this claim, I’ll firstly argue that empathy is principally an act of presentification closely related with perception, memory and imagination. Secondly, I’ll argue that literary empathy with literary characters is an (...) imaginative reproduction of the reader’s bodily sedimentations under the instruction offered by the literary text. Thirdly, I’ll argue that through literary empathy, a reader forms a peculiar intersubjective link with the literary character. The subjects in play are thus the real existential “I” and the imagined Other. Asymmetry of existence-positing and lack of interaction do not prevent the imagined characters from exerting an effective influence upon the reader and reconfiguring her actual life. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Walter Glannon WHAT LITERARY THEORY MISSES IN WITTGENSTEIN Wittgenstein's stock is rising in literary criticism. The market value of expressions such as "language games" and "form oflife" is increasing in that they seem to lend themselves to the notion of interpretive communities endorsed by diose of reader-response persuasion.1 Wittgenstein's style is also apparently at a premium, in light of a recent attempt by a proponent of deconstruction (...) to relate the philosopher's writing to that movement's use of rhetorical strategies in dealing with texts.2 There are affinities between Wittgenstein's repudiation (in the Investigations and the Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics) of the metaphysical realism in the Tractatus and die arguments from reader-response critics against the notion of unmediated facts, as well as the rejection of the metaphysics of presence by deconstructionists. All diree oppose the idea that truth and falsity are conferred on our statements about the world by properties independent of diese statements. Insofar as these two critical schools are concerned primarily with language, they share Wittgenstein's aspiration to "bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use" (PI, I, § 116), for we can arrest the tendency to postulate objective, unmediated facts by "looking into the workings of our language" (PI, I, § 109). Moreover, Wittgenstein avoids psychology which involves the mental faculties. Presumably, this puts him at one with die concerted effort of many critics to rid texts of die author and with it the problem of intentionality. At first blush, then, the relation between Wittgenstein and literary criticism appears to be an attractive one. Yet Wittgenstein's antirealism does not militate against his passion for truth, that is, his intense desire to achieve complete understanding in the areas ofphilosophy that vexed him most.3 Nor does it debar him from thinking about the inexpressible realm 263 264Philosophy and Literature of the mystical, since, despite his concern for language, Wittgenstein never ceased being attracted to "things that cannot be put into words" (TLP, 6.522). This is not at all congenial to die purpose ofliterary theory, which admits ofno such shadowy domain beyond words and our linguistic practices. Indeed, I shall illustrate that Wittgenstein's resdess search for truth, spiritual concerns, and the dialectical structure of his works for the most part put him radically at odds with a critical enterprise whose aversion to truth and penchant for rhetorical analysis and conventions blinds it to both his view of literature and his aim in doing philosophy. I Since die advent of the New Criticism, literary theory has in great measure addressed itself to die discourse ramer than the story in texts. With the focus on literature as a rhetorical construct, more traditional humanistic interpretations have been excised. A more recent development of this shift to the discursive side of diings has been the effort to blur the distinction between literature and philosophy.4 With neidier discipline having a privileged status, both have been reduced to a textual discourse with no lines ofdemarcation, a reduction diat is at variance with Wittgenstein on two counts. First, he compartmentalized literature and philosophy as having distinct purposes: the literary works that interested him were stories ofmoral import; philosophy was to be practiced for the sake of clarity in thought. To the extent diat such clarity, if attainable, pointed toward an ethical dimension that lay beyond the bounds of language, literature and philosophy for him did have a common goal; but the paths leading to it were distinct. Second, and more importantly, Wittgenstein had no concern for the discourse of the literature diat he read. Rather, it was the moral import of the stories that attracted him. Most noteworthy on this score were the writings of Tolstoy, who had a profound influence on Wittgenstein's view oflife, and Dostoevsky.5 Wittgenstein often recommended Tolstoy's Twenty-three Tales to his friends, and while a schoolmaster in Lower Austria from 1920 to 1926, he constantly read The Brothers Karamazov, doing so aloud on one occasion in die presence of the village priest. He was especially impressed with Dostoevsky's character the Elder Zossima, "who could see into people's hearts and direct diem" (Rhees... (shrink)

This chapter offers a character-based criticism of ‘the culture of speed’ condemned by the Canadian literary scholars, Maggie Berg and Barbara Seeber in their influential polemic, The Slow Professor. Central to their criticisms of speed and praise of slowness are, I argue, substantive concerns about their effects on moral and intellectual character. I argue that a full reckoning of the wrongs of academic cultures of speed must include appreciation of the ways they promote a host of accelerative vices and (...) failings while also impeding exercise of a range of the virtues vital to enactment of our core academic commitments to teaching, scholarship, and collegiality. (shrink)

The book deals with philosophical issues concerning the understanding of the literary text and its distinctive nature, meaning, and relevance to life. It also provides an occasion to revisit many of the seminal ideas towards these ends by contextualizing them in the current ongoing philosophical discourse on art, in general, and literary art, in particular. Some of the questions addressed in this book are: What is a literary text? What do we understand by the concept of intention (...) in the context of literary arts? Are the feelings experienced in a literary text real? What then is the sense of “truth” in literature which is fictional in character? What relevance do moral concerns and perceptions have in appreciation of the literary text? These are some of the seminal questions that are dealt with by critically responding to views of contemporary thinkers. In short, the book makes an attempt to provide a critical overview of contemporary debates and discussions of literary aesthetics mainly from a Western analytical perspective. The author argues that understanding a literary text is not a purely cognitive exercise; on the contrary, we experience aesthetic meaning or truth in terms of valuable insights that play a role in our understanding of life and emotions. This book is useful for scholars, researchers and students of philosophy and literature interested in aesthetics. (shrink)

This paper investigates the emotional import of literary devices deployed in fiction. Reflecting on the often-favored approach in the analytic tradition that locates fictional characters, events, and narratives as sources of readers’ emotions, I attempt to broaden the scope of analysis by accounting for how literary devices trigger non-cognitive emotions. I argue that giving more expansive consideration to literary devices by which authors present content facilitates a better understanding of how fiction engages emotion. In doing so, (...) I also explore the somatic dimension of reading fiction. (shrink)