Form and Life in the Theory of the Novel (original) (raw)

The Aesthetic Experience of the Literary Artwork: A Matter of Form and Content?

Ever since the introduction of aesthetics in philosophy, the literary arts have posed a challenge to common notions of aesthetic experience. In this paper, I will focus on the problems that arise when a formalist approach to aesthetics is confronted with literature. My main target is Peter Kivy's ‘essay in literary aesthetics’ Once-Told Tales, in which Kivy defends formalism and concludes from this approach that literature is a non-aesthetic art form. Contrary to Kivy, I will claim that we have good reasons to consider literature an aesthetic art form and, therefore, that the literary arts naturally pose a challenge to formalism. By showing the inextricable intertwining of form and content in literary artworks, I will demonstrate that the identification of so-called aesthetic properties with purely formal properties of a literary artwork is problematic.

Aesthetics and Literature: a Problematic Relation?

Philosophical Studies, 2007

The paper argues that there is a proper place for literature within aesthetics but that care must be taken in identifying just what the relation is. In characterising aesthetic pleasure associated with literature it is all too easy to fall into reductive accounts, for example, of literature as merely ''fine writing''. Belleslettrist or formalistic accounts of literature are rejected, as are two other kinds of reduction, to pure meaning properties and to a kind of narrative realism. The idea is developed that literature-both poetry and prose fiction-invites its own distinctive kind of aesthetic appreciation which far from being at odds with critical practice, in fact chimes well with it.

The Connection between Literature and Aesthetics - Is it problematic?

Most literary critics are reluctant to accept the relevance of aesthetics to literature. The aim of this paper is to show how aesthetics can be related to literature in terms of values, among other concepts. The aesthetic experience and the aesthetic value of literature have long been discussed and, as a result, there have been many divergent theories from philosophers in general and aestheticians in particular. In this paper I revisit P. Lamarque's objections to the connection between aesthetics and literature. I argue for and against these objections, referring to accounts written by several philosophers, among whom M.C. Beardsley, R. Stecker, N. Carroll and K. Walton. I claim that the connection between aesthetics and literature is possible of any literary genre is transformed into an experience which is mostly subjective, and generates aesthetic values which, on the other hand, are more objective and universal. As Lamarque claims, literary critics seem to emphasize more the instrumental values of literature rather than its more purely intrinsic values. Moreover, they are keeping away as much as possible from value judgements of any kind. All this seems to separate literature from aesthetics. There are common factors however, such as aesthetic pleasure, which are used by both aestheticians and literary critics. This is proof enough that literature holds a strong place in contemporary aesthetics. Most aestheticians regard literature, especially poetry, as one of the arts. However the most common issues that philosophers write about are the cognitive and ethical values of literature. Such debates lack the literary and hence the aesthetic aspect of literature. In fact, it is not so obvious that when philosophers write about literature, they are really engaged in aesthetics. This is the focus of this paper: does the concept of aesthetics of literature really connect aesthetics to literature? More precisely, which criteria make literary works suitable for aesthetic evaluation? The key to these questions lies in the aesthetic experience of pleasure.

Breaking the Barriers between Aesthetics and Theory in Literature

Up to few decades ago, aesthetics and theory were considered as two separate disciplines in the realm of literature. More recent studies have indicated that the experience and also the study of literature are breaking these existing boundaries by revealing the common factors present in both aesthetics and theory. Several literary theorists and aestheticians have emphasized this close relation which is woven within literature itself. John Gibson, Derek Attridge and Peter Lamarque are few of the theorists who argue in favour of such a relation. They contend that the perspectives of both aesthetics, as a branch of philosophy, and theory, do not exclude each other. Furthermore, they suggest that both aesthetics and theory can be complementary to each other and combine the philosophical concern with clarity, and the creativity which pertains to theory. The aim of this paper is to show how the study of literature can break the barriers between aesthetics and theory by combining them together in several ways, suggesting possible ties within the creation and the act of reading literature, with particular reference to fictitious narratives. In this paper I shall discuss firstly how ambiguity and imagination can have the potential to effect both literary aesthetics and literary theory offering different results. Secondly I shall focus on fictitious narratives from both the aesthetical and the theoretical points of view. I intend to emphasize the manner we view and discuss literature in the process of reading it. My literary discussion will include theories proposed by the literary philosophers Attridge, Lamarque and McGregor and how these theories can be combined through particular readings, thus breaking the barriers between aesthetics and theory in literature.

AN ECLECTIC OVERVIEW OF LITERATURE AS AN ACT OF LANGUAGE AND THE LANGUAGE OF ART

The answer to the question of what language is to literature seems important to discuss for it to have sustained and occupied a distinctive ferment in almost every literary cycle beginning from the Socratesian, Platonian, Aristotelian, traditional grammarians, rhetoricians, formalists, structuralists, post-structuralists and modernists and post modernists thinkers. All these viewpoints see every literary work as an encounter with language but differ in the way and manner of handling of their verbal episteme. Literature is contemporary and with the function of language at the given time. An eclectic overview of literature as an act of language and the language of art will lead to a scholarly effort to be able to justify literature as the sole distinctive actuality of language and of nothing else.

Review of Philosophy of Literature, ed. S. Schroeder

With all the usual suspects one expects to find in philosophy of literature, like Peter Lamarque and Stein Haugom Olsen, this book offers a brilliant collection of essays tackling various issues in connection to literature in particular and art in general. Some of the centuries old debates are reopened, like Plato’s challenge to the epistemic values of literature, as well as some more modern and up-to-date issues, like the role of criticism in humanities. Although all authors present their own view and defend their own positions, essays are nevertheless highly informative and instructive and can be read not just by someone with keen interest in specific literary- philosophical problems surrounding literature, but also by someone who is interested in the general development of the phenomena of literature, and its place in social life.