Content and Form

2020 ◽  
pp. 39-75
Author(s):  
Patrick Fessenbecker
Keyword(s):  
Literary Theory ◽  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Philosophy Of Literature ◽  
Making Sense

A remarkable demonstration of the contempt literary theory has had for content appears in the various reference dictionaries of literary terms. Almost invariably, they offer lengthy definitions of form, while usually failing to include an entry at all for content. Yet all the while, the term “content” recurs throughout other definitions, a hidden but necessary component of explaining the various methods of making sense of literary texts. A more nuanced account of the form-content distinction, one that draws on both the analytic philosophy of literature and the sophisticated scholarship on allegory in literary theory, explains how form can be a tool for the expression of literary content.

Between Theory and Practice: Literary Theory and Analytic Aesthetics

Tekstualia ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (35) ◽  
pp. 123-134
Author(s):  
Bartosz Stopel
Keyword(s):  
Literary Theory ◽  
Reading Strategies ◽  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Value Judgments ◽  
Dominant Position ◽  
Philosophy Of Literature ◽  
Theoretical Inquiry ◽  
Aesthetic Judgments

The article aims to determine the relation between literary theory and the analytic philosophy of literature. The former is understood mostly as a body of ideologically and culturally focused normative reading strategies, and the latter as an inquiry into the foundations, assumptions and aims of reading and appreciating works of literature. Although at fi rst it might seem that both approaches seem radically incompatible, a closer inspection reveals that, in some cases, they are complementary, while, in others, the relation is more hierarchical, with aesthetic judgments being logically primary to theory-driven research. At the same time, literary theory is always partly a philosophy of literature, as no theoretical inquiry is free from basic aesthetic considerations on the nature of meaning, authorship, or value judgments. In the end, radically anti-theoretical stances of neopragmatists, literary darwinists, or some analytic aestheticians are misguided to the extent that what impedes or suppresses certain types of research in the humanities is literary theory’s institutionally dominant position, rather than its claims, or the type of research it encourages.

scholarly journals Truth-Claiming in Fiction. Towards a Poetics of Literary Assertion

2009 ◽  
Vol 20 (38) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jukka Mikkonen
Keyword(s):  
Literary Theory ◽  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Narrative Fiction ◽  
Literary Critic ◽  
Implied Author ◽  
Philosophy Of Literature ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
Literary Narrative ◽  
Beliefs And Attitudes

In the contemporary analytic philosophy of literature and especially literary theory, the paradigmatic way of understanding the beliefs and attitudes expressed in works of literary narrative fiction is to attribute them to an implied author, an entity which the literary critic Wayne C. Booth introduced in his influential study The Rhetoric of Fiction. The aim of this paper is to suggest that although the implied author sheds light on certain type of literary narratives, it is insufficient in a so-called conversational interpretation, which emphasizes the truth-claims conveyed by a fiction. In my paper, I shall show that, first, from an ontological point of view, truth-claims or actual assertions in fiction, if any, have to be attributed to the actual author and, second, that the question of truth-claiming in and by fiction is an epistemological matter concerning the actual intentions of the author.

Bleibende Aufgaben einer phänomenologischen Literaturtheorie

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 265-273
Author(s):  
Eckhard Lobsien
Keyword(s):  
Literary Theory ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Radical Theory ◽  
Theory Of Reading ◽  
Phenomenological Point

Abstract What sort of object is a literary text? From a phenomenological point of view - phenomenology considered as both a radical theory of reading and a theory of radical reading - a range of answers arise, many of them tinged with deconstructive momentum. This paper aims at pointing out some basic issues in reading literary texts, offering ten theses on the enduring tasks of phenomenological literary theory.

Hopes for Reading in the Era of Globalization

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 505-520
Author(s):  
Cassandra Falke
Keyword(s):  
Effective Teaching ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
Language Ideology ◽  
Literary Texts

Abstract This article identifies in contemporary literary theory a new optimism about the power of literary texts. The medium of this power is not language, ideology, or form but readers open to being changed. Drawing on phenomenology, the article discusses methods for making literary theory students open to and aware of such change, suggesting that hope is the grounding condition for any effective teaching act as well as an effective ground for reading in an era of globalization.

Afterlife

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice Bennett
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Ghost Story ◽  
Life After Death ◽  
The Past ◽  
Poetic Justice ◽  
Way Of Thinking

From classical antiquity onwards, writing about life after death has consistently served as a situation for questions of literary theory. The locations of the afterlife are hypotheticals and counterfactuals; they are the site of theory itself. Questions about authorship, for instance, have been articulated through the myth of Orpheus (in the forms recorded by Virgil and Ovid). The story of Orpheus tells of a poet who must go into the underworld to find the material for a tale of survivorship and loss, raising questions about the sources of creative inspiration, the art of trauma, and the suffering of the authentic artist. Dante’s imagined structures of an afterlife, in which punishments fit crimes with an apt poetic justice, have similarly been enlisted into one of the most important theoretical debates of the 20th century between formalists and historicists. The afterlife as a supplement to life’s time has also been used as a way of thinking about temporality and the implications for narrative as a literary mode that works with and through the philosophy of time. One of the most influential aspects of the literature of the afterlife to resonate in literary theory has been the ghost story. In its greatest manifestations, from Hamlet to The Turn of the Screw to Beloved, the ghost story forces its readers to acknowledge those elements of the past that refuse to be laid to rest, and it has therefore served as a vehicle for psychoanalytic questions about how processes of individual or collective memory are depicted in literary texts. In poststructuralist theory, the notion of the hauntological has also built its concepts in dialogue with earlier literary ghosts and become a way of thinking about language and its uncanny slippage between presence and absence. Subsequent critical work continued to develop hauntology into a way of understanding temporality and cultural history. Finally, the notion of prosopopoeia, or the voicing of the dead through writing, is perhaps the most far-reaching way of understanding the prevalence of dead voices as a literary trope, which reflects something of the processes of reading and writing themselves. The afterlife has therefore been a crucial source of generative metaphors for literary theory, as well as a topic and setting with an important literary history.

Imaginative Theory

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolette Zeeman
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Middle English Literature ◽  
Theoretical Figure

The literary theory of the medieval schools, found in academic prologues or commentaries, is often articulated in an analytical and explicit language. However, in both Latin and vernacular literary texts literary self-theorization may also be expressed in figured and metaphorical form. An example would be Guillaume de Machaut’s “Prologue,” but other widespread and recognizable literary theoretical figures include the dream, the mirror, the reading of a book, or the conversation overheard. It is important for scholarship in Middle English literature to focus more on these “imaginative” articulations of literary theory. This article examines one particular literary-theoretical figure, the chanson d’aventure (“the song of adventure”), which, depending on how it is put together, can perform an array of literary self-commentaries.

scholarly journals 21st-Century Theories of Literature: A Critical Reflection on an Interdisciplinary Event

2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 175-183
Author(s):  
Philip Gaydon ◽  
Andrea Selleri ◽  
Phil Gaydon ◽  
Andrea Selleri
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
Critical Reflection ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Philosophy Of Literature ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
The University

The authors reflect upon the successes and difficulties of developing and running 21st-Century Theories of Literature: Essence, Fiction, and Value, an interdisciplinary conference held at the University of Warwick on 27-29 March 2014.The aim of the conference was to encourage a more sustained focus on the overlap between two disciplines which, prima facie, have a lot in common: philosophical aesthetics (and in particular its literary branch, the philosophy of literature) and  literary studies (of which literary theory may be considered a subdivision). Because both deal with literature and have an investment in the idea of theorisation, one might have thought that there was no need to encourage active dialogue and it would arise naturally from the needs of each field. However, in the current institutional state of affairs where philosophy departments and literature departments often have little overlap, ‘aesthetics’ and ‘literary theory’ are two very distinct entities, and interaction is underdeveloped even when room for it does exist. As such, we judged that there was a need for such a prompting. This piece presents the rationale for our conference, and describes its preparation, development and outcomes.Photo credit: Wittgenstein Vector, copyright eXegesis -  J. Robles, M.D. Rose-Steel, S. M. Steele, 2014.

scholarly journals Litterær kompetanse - portrett av tre lesarar

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 12
Author(s):  
Hallvard Kjelen
Keyword(s):  
Literary Theory ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Literary Reading ◽  
Literature Teaching ◽  
Teaching Literature ◽  
Subjective Responses ◽  
Literary Responses ◽  
Reader Responses ◽  
Men I ◽  
Literature Theory

Artikkelen drøfter eit sentralt problemfelt innom litteraturdidaktikken, nemleg tilhøvet mellom litterær lesing som fagleg kompetanse og litterær lesing som oppleving. Problemfeltet er særleg knytt til Louise Rosenblatts arbeid. Ho viser ved hjelp av omgrepa efferent og estetisk lesing korleis det er ei utfordring for litteraturlæraren å utvikle ei litteraturundervisning som i tilstrekkeleg grad tek omsyn til kjensler og røynsler. I ein litteraturteoretisk kontekst er subjektive responsar på litterære tekstar irrelevante, men i ein litteraturdidaktisk kontekst er subjektive responsar høgst relevante. Denne artikkelen bidrar inn i diskusjon-en mellom anna ved å trekkje inn meir empirisk basert litteraturteori som referanseramme. Artikkelen presenterer tre lesarars litterære responsar, og viser korleis kunnskap om individuelle lesarresponsar kan vere utgangspunkt for ei litteraturundervisning som balanserer ei fagleg tilnærming til litteratur opp mot ei meir opplevingsbasert tilnærming.Emneord: Litteraturundervisning, litterær kompetanse, empirisk litteraturteori, lesarresponsAbstractThe article discusses a key issue in literature didactics, namely the relation between literary reading as an academic competence, and literary reading as an experience. The discussion draws heavily on Louise Rosenblatt’s work. By using the concepts efferent and aesthetic reading, she shows how it is a challenge for the teacher of literature to develop literature teaching that adequately takes emotions and experience into account. In a literature-theoretical context, subjective responses to literary texts are irrelevant; but in a didactics context, the subjective responses are highly relevant.  This article contributes to the discussion by bringing in a more empirically based literature theory as a frame of reference. The article presents three readers’ literary responses, and shows how knowledge of individual reader responses can be the basis for literature teaching which balances an academic approach to literature with a more experience-based approach.Key word: Teaching literature, literary competence, empirical literary theory, reader-response 

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