Abstract:For seven decades, professors of literature have considered referral to an author's intentions to be theoretically out of bounds, while in practice they do it all the time. I suggest that one reason for this undesirable gap between theory and practice is that, for literary scholars, the notion of intention itself is poorly understood. Authorial intention is thought of as single, simple, rationally generated, and preexisting in the author's mind rather than the multiple, complex, and process-based phenomenon that it is. In this essay I provide a bottom-up account of intention with the aim of dispelling this misunderstanding.
{"title":"What is Authorial Intention?","authors":"J. Farrell","doi":"10.1353/phl.2021.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/phl.2021.0004","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:For seven decades, professors of literature have considered referral to an author's intentions to be theoretically out of bounds, while in practice they do it all the time. I suggest that one reason for this undesirable gap between theory and practice is that, for literary scholars, the notion of intention itself is poorly understood. Authorial intention is thought of as single, simple, rationally generated, and preexisting in the author's mind rather than the multiple, complex, and process-based phenomenon that it is. In this essay I provide a bottom-up account of intention with the aim of dispelling this misunderstanding.","PeriodicalId":51912,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE","volume":"45 1","pages":"55 - 70"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/phl.2021.0004","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42096928","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:In this essay, I argue that despite what philosophers often assume, a life is neither an action nor the summation of a series of actions. If life is not itself an action, then life has no end or point that is like that of an action, and thus, a life cannot be judged or evaluated in the way we can judge or evaluate an action. This puts pressure on various assumptions about life and ethical reasoning in the philosophy of action, ethics, and literary studies, and leads to a different understanding of ethics.
{"title":"What is a Life?","authors":"Brett Bourbon","doi":"10.1353/phl.2021.0014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/phl.2021.0014","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In this essay, I argue that despite what philosophers often assume, a life is neither an action nor the summation of a series of actions. If life is not itself an action, then life has no end or point that is like that of an action, and thus, a life cannot be judged or evaluated in the way we can judge or evaluate an action. This puts pressure on various assumptions about life and ethical reasoning in the philosophy of action, ethics, and literary studies, and leads to a different understanding of ethics.","PeriodicalId":51912,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE","volume":"45 1","pages":"211 - 223"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/phl.2021.0014","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43194755","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:Known as the greatest American novel you've never heard of, thanks to the New Yorker, Stoner is often thought of as presenting a failed life. But how does this verdict align with the workings of literature? This article examines how Stoner constructs the life of its protagonist, claiming that the novel generates a sense of life more complex and compelling than a life-as-failure judgment permits: one that relates to how we read literature and the significance we enable it to have for living.
{"title":"\"Life\" in John Williams's Stoner","authors":"Emily Abdeni-Holman","doi":"10.1353/phl.2021.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/phl.2021.0009","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Known as the greatest American novel you've never heard of, thanks to the New Yorker, Stoner is often thought of as presenting a failed life. But how does this verdict align with the workings of literature? This article examines how Stoner constructs the life of its protagonist, claiming that the novel generates a sense of life more complex and compelling than a life-as-failure judgment permits: one that relates to how we read literature and the significance we enable it to have for living.","PeriodicalId":51912,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE","volume":"45 1","pages":"138 - 156"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/phl.2021.0009","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43895542","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:Literary narrators often have warped perceptions of reality and/or motives to deceive. To inspire confidence in questionable sources, I argue, authors sometimes take advantage of readers' cognitive biases. This article explains how three rhetorical devices—maxims, illustrative anecdotes, and speculative statements—can appeal to these predispositions so as to make dubious claims seem credible. Drawing examples from Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time, I illustrate how these stylistic elements can lead readers to trust the narrator more than they rationally should, and I propose that these tactics are essential to our enjoyment of the novel.
{"title":"Cognitive Bias and Narrative Credibility in Proust","authors":"Darci L. Gardner","doi":"10.1353/phl.2021.0000","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/phl.2021.0000","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Literary narrators often have warped perceptions of reality and/or motives to deceive. To inspire confidence in questionable sources, I argue, authors sometimes take advantage of readers' cognitive biases. This article explains how three rhetorical devices—maxims, illustrative anecdotes, and speculative statements—can appeal to these predispositions so as to make dubious claims seem credible. Drawing examples from Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time, I illustrate how these stylistic elements can lead readers to trust the narrator more than they rationally should, and I propose that these tactics are essential to our enjoyment of the novel.","PeriodicalId":51912,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE","volume":"45 1","pages":"1 - 16"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/phl.2021.0000","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47127708","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:In this paper we carry out a comparative analysis of selected texts of modernists T. S. Eliot and W. B. Yeats and postmodernists Samuel Beckett and Graham Swift to determine the nature of their conflicting perspectives on the future. The study attempts to find out how the modernists' vision of the messiah and of history as a metanarrative indicates their sense of the end. Conversely, this analysis seeks to establish in what way the postmodernists' treatment of pseudomessiahs and history as a local narrative signifies their illusion of the end.
{"title":"Modernist Sense of the End and Postmodernist Illusion of the End","authors":"Rizwan Ahmed, A. Aziz","doi":"10.1353/phl.2021.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/phl.2021.0008","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In this paper we carry out a comparative analysis of selected texts of modernists T. S. Eliot and W. B. Yeats and postmodernists Samuel Beckett and Graham Swift to determine the nature of their conflicting perspectives on the future. The study attempts to find out how the modernists' vision of the messiah and of history as a metanarrative indicates their sense of the end. Conversely, this analysis seeks to establish in what way the postmodernists' treatment of pseudomessiahs and history as a local narrative signifies their illusion of the end.","PeriodicalId":51912,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE","volume":"45 1","pages":"121 - 137"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/phl.2021.0008","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49093722","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This paper argues that experimental autobiographies can help readers take the perspectives of others when the practice of theorizing other minds become, at best, tired, and at worst, dehumanizing. The essay studies two experimental texts: one that eschews the traditional means of communicating psychological character development in order to explore the world outside the human (Alain Robbe-Grillet's Le Miroir qui revient), and another that deliberately invests in the representation of marginalized persons as an ethical imperative (Assia Djebar's L'Amour, la fantasia). This confluence suggests that perspective is an unalienable aspect of human subjectivity, in literature as in life.
摘要：本文认为，当对他人思想进行理论化的实践往好了说是疲惫的，往坏了说是非人化的时候，实验自传可以帮助读者从他人的角度出发。本文研究了两个实验文本：一个是为了探索人类之外的世界而避开传统的沟通心理性格发展的手段（阿兰·罗伯·格里耶的《Miroir qui revient》），另一个是故意将边缘化者的表现作为一种道德义务（阿西亚·杰巴尔的《爱，幻想曲》）。这种融合表明，视角是人类主体性的一个不可剥夺的方面，无论是在文学中还是在生活中。
{"title":"Theory of Mind and Experimental Autobiography: Alain Robbe-Grillet and Assia Djebar","authors":"M. Hulstyn","doi":"10.1353/phl.2021.0012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/phl.2021.0012","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This paper argues that experimental autobiographies can help readers take the perspectives of others when the practice of theorizing other minds become, at best, tired, and at worst, dehumanizing. The essay studies two experimental texts: one that eschews the traditional means of communicating psychological character development in order to explore the world outside the human (Alain Robbe-Grillet's Le Miroir qui revient), and another that deliberately invests in the representation of marginalized persons as an ethical imperative (Assia Djebar's L'Amour, la fantasia). This confluence suggests that perspective is an unalienable aspect of human subjectivity, in literature as in life.","PeriodicalId":51912,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE","volume":"45 1","pages":"185 - 198"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/phl.2021.0012","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49144928","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:In Tolstoy's novella The Death of Ivan Ilych, the middle-aged Ivan is dying. During this process, he comes to recognize that his life has been self-absorbed and trivial; such a recognition is, however, the first step on the path to a Christian-style self-abnegation and redemption. So runs the traditional interpretation. Against this, I argue that Ivan's perception and deliberation were distorted by "autobiographical despair": the tendency to downplay the genuine meanings of one's life, meanings that were also central to the dying person's identity. I argue that autobiographical despair is much more dangerous than the more familiar prospective despair.
{"title":"Ivan Ilych and Autobiographical Despair","authors":"C. Cowley","doi":"10.1353/phl.2021.0013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/phl.2021.0013","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In Tolstoy's novella The Death of Ivan Ilych, the middle-aged Ivan is dying. During this process, he comes to recognize that his life has been self-absorbed and trivial; such a recognition is, however, the first step on the path to a Christian-style self-abnegation and redemption. So runs the traditional interpretation. Against this, I argue that Ivan's perception and deliberation were distorted by \"autobiographical despair\": the tendency to downplay the genuine meanings of one's life, meanings that were also central to the dying person's identity. I argue that autobiographical despair is much more dangerous than the more familiar prospective despair.","PeriodicalId":51912,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE","volume":"45 1","pages":"199 - 210"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/phl.2021.0013","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48004575","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:The problem of induction is affective as well as epistemic: how ought we to feel about the limits of human cognition? This question is pursued through H. P. Lovecraft's 1927 short story, "The Colour Out of Space." Lovecraft explores the meaning of our epistemic frailty, drawing on George Santayana's Scepticism and Animal Faith. His narrative elicits inductive vertigo, the fear that our concepts fail to carve nature at the joints.
{"title":"\"The Colour Out of Space\": Lovecraft on Induction","authors":"Kieran Setiya","doi":"10.1353/phl.2021.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/phl.2021.0003","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The problem of induction is affective as well as epistemic: how ought we to feel about the limits of human cognition? This question is pursued through H. P. Lovecraft's 1927 short story, \"The Colour Out of Space.\" Lovecraft explores the meaning of our epistemic frailty, drawing on George Santayana's Scepticism and Animal Faith. His narrative elicits inductive vertigo, the fear that our concepts fail to carve nature at the joints.","PeriodicalId":51912,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE","volume":"45 1","pages":"39 - 54"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/phl.2021.0003","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48606023","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:David Friedell has recently discussed the relationship between intrinsic and extrinsic properties of art, specifically in music. Friedell claims that normative social rules dictate who can change the intrinsic or extrinsic properties of a piece of music. I claim that in text-based theater—as a particular art form—the dividing line between intrinsic and extrinsic properties of a play is sometimes tenuous. This tenuousness is due to a play's bifurcated existence as a dramatic text and as many theatrical performances.
{"title":"Intrinsic-Extrinsic Properties in Theater","authors":"Michael Y. Bennett","doi":"10.1353/phl.2021.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/phl.2021.0002","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:David Friedell has recently discussed the relationship between intrinsic and extrinsic properties of art, specifically in music. Friedell claims that normative social rules dictate who can change the intrinsic or extrinsic properties of a piece of music. I claim that in text-based theater—as a particular art form—the dividing line between intrinsic and extrinsic properties of a play is sometimes tenuous. This tenuousness is due to a play's bifurcated existence as a dramatic text and as many theatrical performances.","PeriodicalId":51912,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE","volume":"45 1","pages":"34 - 38"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/phl.2021.0002","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45098219","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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