Abstract:In his lectures on Russian literature, Vladimir Nabokov condemns Fyodor Dostoevsky's novels as unrealistic and excessively sentimental. Few would deny that Dostoevsky's characters behave erratically and with exaggerated intensity, but must these traits count as literary deficiencies? I argue that Dostoevsky deliberately violates the ostensible realism of his universe to illustrate how worldly engagement can disfigure and corrupt. Assailing readers with bewildering plots and personalities, his novels induce emotions paralleling the volatile drama unfolding on the page. It's a tactic that draws readers into self-examination and lends Dostoevsky's work enduring moral vitality.
{"title":"Even Better Than the Real Thing: Dostoevsky's Absurd Realism","authors":"Aaron Closson","doi":"10.1353/phl.2021.0024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/phl.2021.0024","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In his lectures on Russian literature, Vladimir Nabokov condemns Fyodor Dostoevsky's novels as unrealistic and excessively sentimental. Few would deny that Dostoevsky's characters behave erratically and with exaggerated intensity, but must these traits count as literary deficiencies? I argue that Dostoevsky deliberately violates the ostensible realism of his universe to illustrate how worldly engagement can disfigure and corrupt. Assailing readers with bewildering plots and personalities, his novels induce emotions paralleling the volatile drama unfolding on the page. It's a tactic that draws readers into self-examination and lends Dostoevsky's work enduring moral vitality.","PeriodicalId":51912,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE","volume":"45 1","pages":"463 - 469"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48754271","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:Charlotte Smith's second poetic work, The Emigrants, has received less scholarly attention than her earlier Elegiac Sonnets. Calling for "just compassion," Smith adopts a rather complicated stance toward the French exiles, whose arrival stirred fierce debate across the Channel during the French Revolution. By proposing that The Emigrants should be understood in the context of the eighteenth-century sentimentalist moral philosophy of sympathy (an example of which is Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments), I argue that Smith tactically employs sympathy to affect the reader's judgment of this particular group of people and to provoke a rethinking of social justice.
{"title":"Of \"Just Compassion\": Sympathy, Justice, and the French Exiles in Charlotte Smith's The Emigrants","authors":"Shiqing Chen","doi":"10.1353/phl.2021.0019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/phl.2021.0019","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Charlotte Smith's second poetic work, The Emigrants, has received less scholarly attention than her earlier Elegiac Sonnets. Calling for \"just compassion,\" Smith adopts a rather complicated stance toward the French exiles, whose arrival stirred fierce debate across the Channel during the French Revolution. By proposing that The Emigrants should be understood in the context of the eighteenth-century sentimentalist moral philosophy of sympathy (an example of which is Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments), I argue that Smith tactically employs sympathy to affect the reader's judgment of this particular group of people and to provoke a rethinking of social justice.","PeriodicalId":51912,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE","volume":"45 1","pages":"383 - 396"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42241639","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:Often seen as an anti-work crank, Henry David Thoreau was, in reality, an astute philosopher of work who devised a philosophy that envisioned the beneficial role work plays in the well-lived life. His essay "Life without Principle" is a jeremiad that laments the ways that materialism corrupts work, and calls upon his readers to repent and turn to a life of self-culture guided by moral and spiritual values. Salvation of work comes from a life lived with principle that makes work pleasurable for the worker, moral in its execution, and beneficial to the common good.
{"title":"Thoreau's \"Life without Principle\" and the Art of Living and Getting a Living","authors":"David B. Raymond","doi":"10.1353/phl.2021.0020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/phl.2021.0020","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Often seen as an anti-work crank, Henry David Thoreau was, in reality, an astute philosopher of work who devised a philosophy that envisioned the beneficial role work plays in the well-lived life. His essay \"Life without Principle\" is a jeremiad that laments the ways that materialism corrupts work, and calls upon his readers to repent and turn to a life of self-culture guided by moral and spiritual values. Salvation of work comes from a life lived with principle that makes work pleasurable for the worker, moral in its execution, and beneficial to the common good.","PeriodicalId":51912,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE","volume":"45 1","pages":"397 - 415"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45543942","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}
{"title":"The Logic of Sentiment: Stowe, Hawthorne, and Melville by Kenneth Dauber (review)","authors":"Russell Sbriglia","doi":"10.1353/phl.2021.0028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/phl.2021.0028","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51912,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE","volume":"45 1","pages":"499 - 505"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48345998","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:Ezra Pound struck out lines in T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land manuscript that referred to the writing of bad poetry. His mentee Ernest Hemingway deleted a description of poor novel writing from The Sun Also Rises. What intrigues me is the possibility that these passages were cut as anxious self-reflections. I argue that self-critical voices accompany literary composition, sometimes make their way into drafts, and in happier cases are dropped prior to publication. Naomi Cumming's work in the philosophy of performative consciousness is central to this demonstration, which suggests that anxiety and risk are pivotal to the production of literature.
{"title":"From the Margin a Silent Tick: On the Traces of Performative Judgment in Literary Works","authors":"Paul Magee","doi":"10.1353/phl.2021.0033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/phl.2021.0033","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Ezra Pound struck out lines in T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land manuscript that referred to the writing of bad poetry. His mentee Ernest Hemingway deleted a description of poor novel writing from The Sun Also Rises. What intrigues me is the possibility that these passages were cut as anxious self-reflections. I argue that self-critical voices accompany literary composition, sometimes make their way into drafts, and in happier cases are dropped prior to publication. Naomi Cumming's work in the philosophy of performative consciousness is central to this demonstration, which suggests that anxiety and risk are pivotal to the production of literature.","PeriodicalId":51912,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE","volume":"45 1","pages":"329 - 347"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49191863","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:Mary Shelley's Frankenstein has been read and reread for decades as a cautionary myth about science. The interpretation is well known: a gentler, gradualist science is preferable to the aggressive Enlightenment rationality that spawned the Creature. However, I argue in this essay that such a distinction between "safe" and "dangerous" science is largely effaced in the novel itself. By reading Frankenstein alongside Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment, I aim to demonstrate that Shelley levels a radical critique of how modern science mediates our moral world by dissolving the boundaries between civilization and nature, enlightenment and barbarism.
{"title":"Frankenstein, the Frankfurt School, and the Domination of Nature","authors":"Sid Simpson","doi":"10.1353/phl.2021.0021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/phl.2021.0021","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Mary Shelley's Frankenstein has been read and reread for decades as a cautionary myth about science. The interpretation is well known: a gentler, gradualist science is preferable to the aggressive Enlightenment rationality that spawned the Creature. However, I argue in this essay that such a distinction between \"safe\" and \"dangerous\" science is largely effaced in the novel itself. By reading Frankenstein alongside Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment, I aim to demonstrate that Shelley levels a radical critique of how modern science mediates our moral world by dissolving the boundaries between civilization and nature, enlightenment and barbarism.","PeriodicalId":51912,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE","volume":"45 1","pages":"416 - 434"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-01-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41875048","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}
{"title":"From Joyce to McKeon: The University, the Humanities, and the Becoming Teacher","authors":"Áine Mahon","doi":"10.1353/phl.2021.0018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/phl.2021.0018","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51912,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE","volume":"45 1","pages":"255 - 267"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/phl.2021.0018","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43397578","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}
{"title":"A New Theory of Tragic Catharsis","authors":"R. Glassberg","doi":"10.1353/phl.2021.0016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/phl.2021.0016","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51912,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE","volume":"45 1","pages":"249 - 252"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/phl.2021.0016","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42759209","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 message read: "Our new artificial intelligence program will replace Professor R. in tomorrow's literary criticism seminar." Would this make a difference? I dismiss the response that artificial intelligence cannot critically appreciate literature as it lacks emotion, and argue that it is the lack of a sense of significance that is important. I take this sense of significance to be a kind of abductive reasoning that identifies literary detail as important and, what is more, does so in a way that is of interest to many readers. The paper ends with a fivefold challenge to any institution thinking of replacing literature professors with machines.
{"title":"\"A. I. Richards\": Can Artificial Intelligence Appreciate Poetry?","authors":"J. Phelan","doi":"10.1353/phl.2021.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/phl.2021.0005","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The message read: \"Our new artificial intelligence program will replace Professor R. in tomorrow's literary criticism seminar.\" Would this make a difference? I dismiss the response that artificial intelligence cannot critically appreciate literature as it lacks emotion, and argue that it is the lack of a sense of significance that is important. I take this sense of significance to be a kind of abductive reasoning that identifies literary detail as important and, what is more, does so in a way that is of interest to many readers. The paper ends with a fivefold challenge to any institution thinking of replacing literature professors with machines.","PeriodicalId":51912,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE","volume":"45 1","pages":"71 - 87"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/phl.2021.0005","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48277655","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:What does the impossible location of Finch's Landing tell us about the moral pedagogy of To Kill a Mockingbird? Rejecting the claim that the novel calls for us to place ourselves in another's shoes, I argue that it actually exposes the weakness of this mechanism as a resource for moral action. Instead, the novel seeks to demonstrate that such action requires a kind of engaged critical reflection, one called for by a text that makes far more significant demands on the reader than many have recognized. The location of Finch's Landing is the key to understanding the whole text. Seriously.
{"title":"Where is Finch's Landing? Rereading To Kill A Mockingbird As Moral Pedagogy","authors":"S. Stow","doi":"10.1353/phl.2021.0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/phl.2021.0010","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:What does the impossible location of Finch's Landing tell us about the moral pedagogy of To Kill a Mockingbird? Rejecting the claim that the novel calls for us to place ourselves in another's shoes, I argue that it actually exposes the weakness of this mechanism as a resource for moral action. Instead, the novel seeks to demonstrate that such action requires a kind of engaged critical reflection, one called for by a text that makes far more significant demands on the reader than many have recognized. The location of Finch's Landing is the key to understanding the whole text. Seriously.","PeriodicalId":51912,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE","volume":"45 1","pages":"157 - 171"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/phl.2021.0010","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41800400","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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