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From Weltpoesie to Weltpoetik: World Poetics as Third-Order Observing Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2024-06-22 Thomas Beebee
Abstract: This essay explores the idea of a world poetics through the lens of system theory. I propose three hypotheses that relate to Wang Ning's call for a world poetics: 1) world literature is coterminous with world poetics as guidelines for "making" world literature; 2) world literature is brought about by rendering the vast majority of literature invisible, whether the distinction is drawn geographically
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World Poetics: Some Reflections on Its Rise and Conception Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2024-06-22 Ming Dong Gu
Abstract: "World literature" has come of age. Its maturity calls for a world theory of literature. In this context, I will examine some important issues arising from Wang Ning's proposal for its conception and construction. Critically reviewing the historical movement from national literature to world literature and world poetics, this article addresses some fundamental issues including: Is it necessary
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Worlding and Reworlding of Weltliteratur as Place and Value: From Asia into Oceania Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2024-06-22 Rob Sean Wilson
Abstract: World literature entangled in the forms, values, terms, and genres of comparative poetics makes the literatures of sites like Asia Pacific, India, and Oceania better recognized in world creativity and border-crossing archipelagic agency. World literature can become enframed not just along "borderlands" of nations and regions but also across "borderwaters" of entangled places, regions, and
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World Poetics, Narrative Poetics, and Genre Studies Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2024-06-22 Biwu Shang
Abstract: As a response to Wang Ning's proposal for world poetics, this paper makes a brief revisit to Earl Miner's work on comparative poetics in connection with his pursuit of literary systems before dwelling on the tenets and principles of Wang's proposed world poetics. Subscribing to Wang's position that all literary theories from different cultures should be given equal access to the theoretical
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Transforming Perspectives: Reconfiguration in the Poetics of World Literature Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2024-06-22 Jin Bing
Abstract: The first part of the present paper offers a critical response to Wang Ning's proposed construction of world poetics, based on a brief reexamination of the changing meanings and implications regarding the concept of world literature. The second part is an elucidation of the dynamics and tensions between global tendencies and local manifestations, taking the May Fourth writers and Xueheng
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Love, Jealousy, and the Fear of Ontological Dependence: A Philosophical Reading of Shakespeare's Othello Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2024-06-22 Vittorio Sandri
Abstract: Othello truly loves Desdemona and yet, this paper argues, he wants on some level to believe in her infidelity. But if he loves her so much, why would he want to believe in something that would destroy that love? The answer to this mystery, I contend, must be found in the connections between jealousy, love, and the great existential fragility to which love can expose us—connections that Shakespeare's
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Explanation Beyond Interpretation Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2024-06-22 Aaron R. Hanlon
Abstract: This article questions the extent to which interpretation explains literature, arguing that interpretation and explanation are not the same thing. It first engages with recent critical discussions of method and explanation in literary studies, finding that they are not much about method at all. It then offers a methodological framework that goes beyond various "method wars" over "critique"
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Cultivating Moral Attention in Ellison's Invisible Man and Murdoch's Moral Theory Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2024-06-22 Amy C. Smith
Abstract: Is Invisible Man a sexist novel? Some critics have said so. I argue that reading Invisible Man solely with a focus on gender representation misses an ethically significant dynamic between Ralph Ellison's narrator and white women. Reading Invisible Man alongside Iris Murdoch's moral philosophy reveals a shared emphasis on cultivating attention to the realities of individuals by resisting fantasy
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"I Trot Like a Horse": The Early Modern Animal Debate in Gulliver's Travels Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2024-06-22 Dana Laitinen
Abstract: Does Gulliver's apparent equiphilia (love for equines) at the conclusion of Jonathan Swift's satire signify madness or misanthropy? I say neither, and propose that the neighing narrator is a satirical figure encompassing the animal debate between Michel de Montaigne and René Descartes. Swift's satire, I argue, addresses the early-modern controversy over human-animal distinctions by dramatizing
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Biofictional Nietzsche among the Biofictionalists Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2024-06-22 Michael Lackey
Abstract: Friedrich Nietzsche is the protagonist of many novels, but for authors of biofictions of the German iconoclast, their Nietzsche is not supposed to be seen as the real Nietzsche. Following Nietzsche's method in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which is an early and vitally important biofiction, authors of biofiction about Nietzsche use the life of the German philologist to give readers themselves.
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Everything to Do with Dionysus: Reading The Birth of Tragedy through the Lens of Satyr Play Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2024-06-22 Christina Tarnopolsky
Abstract: This article offers a new reading of Friedrich Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy by reading it as a satyr play that utilizes motifs from Euripides's Bacchae, which itself has recently been read as a satyr play. Reading The Birth of Tragedy this way offers new insights into Nietzsche's notion of satyr plays and their relation to Greek tragedy. It also helps to shed light on Nietzsche's depiction
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The Distance of Irish Modernism: Memory, Narrative, Representation by John Greaney (review) Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2024-06-22 Xiaojing Chen, Hamid Farahmandian
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: The Distance of Irish Modernism: Memory, Narrative, Representation by John Greaney Xiaojing Chen and Hamid Farahmandian The Distance of Irish Modernism: Memory, Narrative, Representation, John Greaney; 248 pp. London: Blooms-bury Academic, 2022. In his thought-provoking book The Distance of Irish Modernism, John Greaney embarks
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Of Love and Music in Book 5 of Rousseau's the Confessions Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-12-05 Üner Daglier
Abstract: In book 5 of his historically controversial autobiography, the Confessions, Jean-Jacques Rousseau describes his involvement in a perfectly harmonious ménage à trois centered around the charming Mme. de Warens. Despite his assertions to the contrary, however, the text indicates that Rousseau harbored jealous feelings and banked on Mme. de Warens's passion for music to gain an edge over his
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The Question of Doxa: D. H. Lawrence's Influence on Deleuze and Guattari's Aesthetics Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-12-05 Andrei Ionescu
Abstract: In this article I investigate D. H. Lawrence's influence on the development of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's aesthetics, by focusing on the notion of doxa and its relation to art. Deleuze and Guattari's understanding of art as a struggle against opinion emerges from their engagement with Lawrence and gives rise to a form of cultural elitism dating back to Plato. After historically contextualizing
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How Blue Is Read: Language and Sensation in Literature and Philosophy Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-12-05 Nicholas Gaskill
Abstract: Philosophers and art critics have long argued that the language of color misses or even mars the ineffable sensation of color. But a literary perspective shows otherwise. Starting with examples of colors read but not seen, and then discussing how philosophers have addressed (and often muddled) the so-called problem of color, I propose thinking of color terms as techniques for stabilizing
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Wilhelm Meister in Lucinde's Eyes: On Schlegel's Dispute with Goethe Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-12-05 Malwina Rolka, Paweł Jędrzejko
Abstract: In 1798, Friedrich Schlegel published a review of Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, extolling Johann Wolfgang Goethe's book as a masterpiece. At the same time, he commenced work on Lucinde, which caused a moral scandal and was criticized widely. Here, I retrace several threads of Schlegel's novel that testify to the fact that his assessment of Goethe's work may not have been so unequivocally
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Veiled Meaning In Plato's Phaedrus: Dramatic Detail as a Guide for Philosophizing Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-12-05 Christopher Lee Adamczyk
Abstract: In the Phaedrus, Plato provides an intriguing dramatic detail immediately before Socrates's first speech. "I shall veil myself to speak," Socrates declares, "so that I may run through the speech as quickly as possible and may not be at a complete loss from a sense of shame as I look towards you." In this essay, I argue that Socrates's veiling illustrates how authors of dialogic literature
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The Nondiscursive Aesthetics of Music, Lyric Poetry, and Tragedy Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-12-05 Tomislav Zelić
Abstract: Is it possible to speak about the unspeakable as it is represented in music, lyric poetry, and tragedy? The answer is yes, if we adopt a purely aesthetic perspective. The answer is no, if we adopt the perspective of the transcendental subject as the metaphysical source of music, lyric poetry, and tragedy. In this paper, I conceptualize the nondiscursivity of music, lyric poetry, and Attic
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The Methodology of Sherlock Holmes: What Is at the Nub of the Process? Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-12-05 Russell L. Quacchia
Abstract: The nub of Sherlock Holmes's investigative process has been overlooked in the analytical literature on the subject—until now. This study drills down into the character's methodology to explicate what is at its very heart. I present Holmes as a rational empiricist operating at the explicit level of observation and inference but also as an intuitive empathizer operating at a tacit level of
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The Role of the Author in Literary Understanding Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-12-05 Nino Tevdoradze
Abstract: The prevailing anti-authorial trend in contemporary mainstream literary theory and aesthetic anti-intentionalism produces different versions of "the death of the author" concept. Conversely, different forms of intentionalism in the analytic tradition strongly defend the relevance of authorial intentions. Although I agree with classic intentionalism on some key points, I find it untenable
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Middleman: Homer's Philosophical Rhapsody Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-12-05 Mark Glouberman
Abstract: Although the Iliad is typically approached as a version of, say, Catch-22, the epic is not about armed conflict and its horrors. The war at Troy serves the poet as a metaphor for life. Advanced in the hexameters is an account of the genesis, and a defense, of the humanist view that men and women occupy an autonomous place midway between clods and gods. Plato's harsh criticism of Homer's work
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How Black Lives Matter: Alice Walker, Alasdair Macintyre, and the Moral Significance of Enacted Narrative Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-12-05 Brett Beasley
Abstract: What does it mean to claim that "lives" should be the cornerstone of ethical analysis and reflection? This question has been raised by the Black Lives Matter movement. However, public discussions of the movement have often devolved into rhetorical battles that elide the movement's central moral claims. This paper investigates the question by examining the role of "lives" in the Black womanist
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The Literary Bias: Narrative and the Self Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-12-05 Daniel Just
Abstract: Narratives are an interface that evolution has instilled in our brains for their optimal interaction with reality. Without them we would not be who we are: creatures that narrativize their experiences, integrate them into their autobiographical self, and imagine the future of this self. But narratives also distort reality by endowing it with meaning, purpose, and causality even when none
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Aphorisms Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-12-05 Daniel Liebert
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Aphorisms Daniel Liebert One man alone is too much for one man alone. —Antonio Porchia1 Inspired by the Antonio Porchia quotation above, I have put aside aphorisms as varieties of "wit and word" games for a while to explore the question, "Can the writing of aphorisms be a profoundly serious activity of the inner life?" I hope to capture
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Three Poems on Memory Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-12-05 Alessio Zanelli
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Three Poems on Memory Alessio Zanelli MICROCHIMERISM I feel them,the way I feel the stardust seeping through my skin.I feel them in the light and in the dark,in absolute silence and in deafening noise,in peaceful days and in gloomy days,while awake and while asleep.They whisper to me who I am,where I came from and where I'm headed.They
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Reading as a Philosophical Practice by Robert Piercey (review) Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-12-05 Iris Vidmar Jovanović
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: Reading as a Philosophical Practice by Robert Piercey Iris Vidmar Jovanović Reading as a Philosophical Practice, by Robert Piercey, 130 pp. London: Anthem Press, 2021. Robert Piercey's Reading as a Philosophical Practice is dedicated to exploring the passion of reading, and to explaining ways in which common readers, as Virginia
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The Philosophy of Isaiah Berlin by Johnny Lyons (review) Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-12-05 Mario Clemens
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: The Philosophy of Isaiah Berlin by Johnny Lyons Mario Clemens The Philosophy of Isaiah Berlin, by Johnny Lyons; 276 pp. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. A well-established Isaiah Berlin scholar recently pointed out, "Berlin gets us interested in value pluralism, but he leaves us with many questions."1 Therefore, is it really
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Everyday Poetics: Logic, Love, and Ethics by Brett Bourbon (review) Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-12-05 Katie Pelkey
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: Everyday Poetics: Logic, Love, and Ethics by Brett Bourbon Katie Pelkey Everyday Poetics: Logic, Love, and Ethics by Brett Bourbon; 200 pp. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022. In Everyday Poetics: Logic, Love, and Ethics, Brett Bourbon probes the nature of poetry and its centrality in our everyday lives, working from the
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Playing the Dummy: Maugham, Smartphones, and the End of Elegance Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-12-05 Eric Bronson
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Playing the Dummy:Maugham, Smartphones, and the End of Elegance Eric Bronson I On the Russian Trans-Siberian train from Vladivostok to Petrograd (now St. Petersburg), an American businessman won't stop talking for the entire ten-day journey. In his story, "A Chance Acquaintance," W. Somerset Maugham describes this 1917 meeting between
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From Iliadic Integrity to Post-Machiavellian Spoils: James's The Ambassadors Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-06-13 James Duban, Jeffrey M. Duban
Abstract: This study links Homeric and Machiavellian outlooks in Henry James's The Ambassadors. We first relate Lambert Strether's embassy seeking Chad's return to Woollett to what Alexander Pope famously designated the "Embassy to Achilles," i.e., the Achaean effort to induce Achilles's return to battle. Achilles impassionedly rejects the embassy's hypocrisy; he will not be bought. We then find Chad
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Emerson on the Future of Art Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-06-13 Jeff Wieand
Abstract: This paper discusses Emerson's thoughts on the history and future of art in his 1841 essay "Art." I suggest that characterizing Emerson as a "functionalist" obscures the radical nature of his views and that Emerson ultimately sought the disappearance of the fine arts altogether through a merger of fine art with other creative activities. Emerson seeks to raise human creativity to a divine
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Can I Talk about Shakespeare? Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-06-13 Robert B. Pierce
Abstract: Can I (and you) talk sensibly about William Shakespeare's works? Some historicists see insuperable barriers in trying to understand utterances from different times and cultures, and some skeptics see such barriers in trying to read other minds. In Ludwig Wittgenstein's famous utterance about not understanding a talking lion, is the early modern Englishman Shakespeare one of those lions? Or
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Artworks and Persons Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-06-13 Robert S. Lehman
Abstract: What does it mean to recognize something as a work of art? In this paper, I approach the question, first, through a discussion of Stanley Cavell's likening of the recognition of artworks to the recognition of persons; and, second, through a discussion of the tendency, especially during the artistic period of Modernism, to compare artworks not to persons but to monsters. My claim is that,
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Aesthetic Modes of the Infinite: Horror, Sublimity, and Relationality Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-06-13 Patricia García
Abstract: What is the relationship between philosophical understandings of the infinite and their narrative expressions? This article explores the infinite in two aesthetic paradigms: the horror of the infinite in classical Greece, and Romanticism's glorification of the unlimited. It argues that these two approaches paved the way for a third, a "relational infinite" that emerged in the second half
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Crito's Homeric Embassy Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-06-13 James A. Arieti
Abstract: This paper is an analysis of Plato's use of the embassy to Achilles in Homer's Iliad book 9 as a literary template for Crito's mission to persuade Socrates to escape from prison in Athens. Plato's purpose is to elevate the nature of a hero by contrasting the impulsive, impetuous, mercurial temper of Achilles with the steady, thoughtful, deliberative, calmly rational argument of Socrates.
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Enactment or Exploration: Two Roles for Philosophy in the Novel of Ideas Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-06-13 Donald Nordberg
Abstract: I examine the often-denigrated concept of the novel of ideas from its inception and critical decline to its relatively recent revival. Using a variant of the exploitation-exploration dilemma in psychology, I suggest that early usage referred to works that exploit philosophical principles—or better, enact them—by setting philosophical positions in conflict. By contrast, use of the concept
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Poetry, Inspiration, and Knowledge in Plato's Ion: From Paradox to Pedagogy Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-06-13 David Carr
Abstract: In Plato's Ion, Socrates dismisses the "inspired" creations of poetic or other art as genuine forms of knowledge or techne, foreshadowing his later suspicion and (even) condemnation of the human value of art in such later dialogues as Republic. I argue that while Socrates raises a serious issue, this ancient case for inherent opposition or contradiction between inspiration and knowledge rests
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On the Difference between a Genius and an Apostle: Auden, Kierkegaard, and the Poetry of Vocation Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-06-13 Asher Gelzer-Govatos
Abstract: Though critics have long recognized the influence of Søren Kierkegaard on poet W. H. Auden, the understanding of Auden's debt to Kierkegaard has primarily focused on the most famous aspects of Kierkegaard's thought: the "stages of life" and "leap of faith." By recovering the depths of Auden's reading of Kierkegaard, this article redefines their relationship: Kierkegaard's most lasting impact
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"Prufrock" between Acquaintance and Description: Bertrand Russell and T. S. Eliot Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-06-13 Maya Kronfeld
Abstract: This article recovers a submerged philosophical debate between Bertrand Russell's theory of descriptions and T. S. Eliot's "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Russell's concern with immediate experience ("acquaintance") underscores a dilemma troubling literary modernism generally and modernist abstraction in particular. In "Prufrock," acquaintance with reality marks an epistemic failure whose
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Lingering: Wittgenstein, Cavell, and the Problem of Style Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-06-13 Paolo Babbiotti
Abstract: Taking my title from "Lingering in the Woods," one of Umberto Eco's Six Walks in the Fictional Woods, I present a study of Stanley Cavell's style of writing. While a dominant Anglo-American style of philosophical writing seems to be motivated principally by a desire for argumentation, a Cavellian, lingering style aims at thorough expression and description of the human experience. Traces
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Stoppard's Philosophical Investigations; Or, Wittgenstein's Dogg's Hamlet Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-06-13 Fergus Edwards
Abstract: Contenders for serious, let alone worthwhile, philosophical works consisting entirely of jokes are hard to find. Tom Stoppard's comedy Dogg's Hamlet, built from the materials of Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, might be one. Wittgenstein could only use previously acquired language to argue that social performance is a necessary prerequisite for the process of learning that
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The World as I Found It: Possibilities and Peculiarities about Speech and Conversation Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-06-13 David Wemyss
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: The World as I Found It:Possibilities and Peculiarities about Speech and Conversation David Wemyss In November 2002, a series of tutorials was advertised within the University of Cambridge. Neville Critchley—a lecturer in philosophy with a reputation for preferring literature—placed advertisements on college notice boards saying he wanted
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Reflections on Robert B. Pippin's Philosophy by Other Means Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-06-13 Charles Altieri
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reflections on Robert B. Pippin's Philosophy by Other Means Charles Altieri Robert Pippin's book is terrific in many ways.1 He not only makes Hegel's aesthetic theorizing lucid; he makes it extremely attractive, especially in his account of how artists double the sensuous world so that an artwork embodies the presence of the spirit's labor
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A Response to Charles Altieri Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-06-13 Robert B. Pippin
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: A Response to Charles Altieri Robert B. Pippin Iam very grateful to Charles Altieri for his attentive reading of and thoughtful critique of Philosophy by Other Means: The Arts in Philosophy and Philosophy in the Arts.1 Let me proceed immediately to his main and quite important criticism of the approach defended there. It is this: "My one
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Further Reflections Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-06-13 Charles Altieri
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Further Reflections Charles Altieri I see now that I was wrong in lumping Robert B. Pippin with other philosophers who adapt literary experience to philosophical purposes.1 And I was probably too taken with Walter Benjamin to appreciate fully Pippin's version of Proustian sensibility. I can invoke no authority to explain why I did not
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Enter the Child: A Scene from Stanley Cavell's The Claim of Reason Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-01-17 Sarah Beckwith
Abstract: Taking its cue from a resonant passage in Stanley Cavell's The Claim of Reason, this essay reflects on the necessity of the figure of the child for Cavell's philosophy and for his understanding of the differences between Austinian and Wittgensteinian criteria. It develops the difference between instruction and initiation by meditating on how we learn the words for love. Finally, I examine
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Wordsworth and the Idea of a Poetic Theodicy Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-01-17 Mark Alznauer
Abstract: Claims are often made that, in the late eighteenth century or early nineteenth century, artists attempted to take over certain functions from religion, particularly the function of redeeming the world. But what exactly it might mean for art to redeem the world is rarely treated with any precision. In this essay, I show that Wordsworth's idea of a poetic theodicy offers an unusually clear
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"Now, how were his sentiments to be read?": Imagination and Discernment in Austen's Persuasion Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-01-17 Lauren Kopajtic
Abstract: The claim is often made that the novel can be an important resource in developing the moral capacities of readers, but how might this work? What would such an education look like for the reader of a novel? This paper explores these questions by working through a specific novel, Jane Austen's Persuasion, and examining how it accomplishes these goals. I argue that Persuasion dramatizes the
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The Paradox of Fiction: A Proposal for a Solution Based on the Information-Processing Approach Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-01-17 Sam S. Rakover
Abstract: The paradox of fiction deals with the following question: how is it possible to react emotionally to a fictive image? After a discussion of two important solutions to the paradox, I present an outline of my solution. The "real/fictional information-processing" theory proposes that all kinds of stimuli (real or fictive) are undergoing information processing by the cognitive system. Each stimulus
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At the Feet of Philosophy: The Dialectics of the Two-Legged Thinker Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-01-17 Ira Avneri
Abstract: Focusing on Socrates and Oedipus, this article explores the role of imagery of legs and leg-associated activities in philosophical and dramatic representations of philosophers. Socrates's philosophizing begins with wandering, culminates in immobile standing, and tragically ends with his sitting with his legs planted in the ground. Oedipus's philosophizing involves tragic ignorance of his
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World-Based Make-Believe Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-01-17 Victor Yelverton Haines II
Abstract: How might reading fiction allow a victim of the deadly sin of pride to escape? Your fictive imagination uses the transworld exemplification of performance props playing the somaesthetic role of your avatar, a character whom you are not simply acting or identifying with but "being." You avoid the epistemic glitch of a point of view from nowhere. You play the fictive role of your avatar either
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Nostromo and Negative Longing Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-01-17 Daniel Brudney
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Nostromo and Negative Longing Daniel Brudney What, as the upshot of this exhibition of human motive and attitude, do we feel Conrad himself to endorse? What are his positives? It is easier to say what he rejects or criticizes. —F. R. Leavis, The Great Tradition1 I Writers, playwrights, filmmakers have often seen their work as political
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How Is a Metamorphosis of a Lady into a Fox Possible? A Philosophical Comment on David Garnett's Lady into Fox Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-01-17 Amihud Gilead
Abstract: Describing the metamorphosis of a beloved wife into a vixen, David Garnett's novella Lady into Fox does not depict a possible world that is remote from our actual one. This metamorphosis is a metaphor, a speech act embedded in a literary description of actual reality, in which marriage, dissociated from natural, free untrammeled love, turns into a hunt—terminating in the horrible death of
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Diachronicity, Episodicity, and the Aesthetic of Historicist Criticism Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-01-17 Thomas F. Haddox
Abstract: Historicist criticism makes more sense as an aesthetic stance than as a discipline for producing knowledge. I examine Galen Strawson's essay "Against Narrativity" and Ian McEwan's novel Saturday to account for historicism's distinct aesthetic. Strawson distinguishes between Diachronic and Episodic orientations toward time, and both writers work to validate the Episodic perspective against
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Romantic Love and the Feudal Household: Romeo and Juliet as Social Criticism Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-01-17 Thomas E. Wartenberg
Abstract: Romeo and Juliet is one of the first works to emphasize the important place that romantic love holds in the lives of two individuals. Less frequently acknowledged is the role of romantic love in the play's criticism of feudal society. Using the notion of an unlikely couple, I explore the play's critique of feudal society for allowing the antagonism between the two lovers' noble households
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Ethical Criticism in Hell: The Sympathetic Fallacy of Inferno 32–33 Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-01-17 James Nikopoulos
Abstract: The Inferno's central conflict is between us readers and God. When fictional characters captivate us, we are normally free to enjoy their charms. Not so Dante's sinners. If we feel bad for these characters, it cannot be because they are sympathetic—after all, God put them in Hell—but because we are naive. But is this sympathy really naive? This article reconsiders the Ugolino episode as a
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A Renaissance Exercise Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-01-17 Roy Glassberg
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: A Renaissance Exercise Roy Glassberg Describing the influence of Aristotle's Poetics on education in Renaissance Italy, Lane Cooper writes, "Before 15431 it was a regular academic exercise to compare a Greek tragedy with a Senecan, with the demands of the Poetics as a standard."2 An interesting prompt for an article, one that I shall here
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Time of the Magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade That Reinvented Philosophy by Wolfram Eilenberger (review) Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-01-17 David Herman
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: Time of the Magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade That Reinvented Philosophy by Wolfram Eilenberger David Herman Time of the Magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade That Reinvented Philosophy, by Wolfram Eilenberger, trans. Shaun Whiteside; 432 pp. New York: Penguin
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The African Novel of Ideas: Philosophy and Individualism in the Age of Global Writing by Jeanne-Marie Jackson (review) Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-01-17 Avram Alpert
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: The African Novel of Ideas: Philosophy and Individualism in the Age of Global Writing by Jeanne-Marie Jackson Avram Alpert The African Novel of Ideas: Philosophy and Individualism in the Age of Global Writing, by Jeanne-Marie Jackson; 232 pp. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021. The world of postcolonial literary studies
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Flowers of Time: On Postapocalyptic Fiction by Mark Payne (review) Philosophy and Literature (IF 0.1) Pub Date : 2023-01-17 Aihua Chen
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: Flowers of Time: On Postapocalyptic Fiction by Mark Payne Aihua Chen Flowers of Time: On Postapocalyptic Fiction, by Mark Payne; 192 pp. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020. Mark Payne's Flowers of Time: On Postapocalyptic Fiction contributes significantly to the nascent scholarship on the ever-increasing corpus of