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The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Literature

Online ISBN:
9780199892006
Print ISBN:
9780195182637
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Literature

Richard Eldridge (ed.)
Richard Eldridge
(ed.)
Philosophy, Swarthmore College
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Richard Eldridge is Charles and Harriett Cox McDowell Professor of Philosophy at Swarthmore College. He is the author of On Moral Personhood: Philosophy, Literature, Criticism, Self-Understanding; Leading a Human Life: Wittgenstein, Intentionality, and Romanticism; The Persistence of Romanticism; An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art; and, most recently, Literature, Life, and Modernity; and he is the editor of Beyond Representation and Stanley Cavell.

Published online:
2 September 2009
Published in print:
2 April 2009
Online ISBN:
9780199892006
Print ISBN:
9780195182637
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Literature contains twenty-three articles by major philosophers and literary scholars that investigate literature as a form of attention to human life. Various forms of attention are considered under the topics of genres (from ancient epic to the novel and contemporary experimental writing), periods (from realism and Romanticism to postcolonialism), devices and powers (imagination, plot, character, style, and emotion), and contexts and uses (in relation to inquiry, morality, and politics). In each case, the effort is to track and evaluate how specific modes and works of imaginative literature answer to important needs of human subjects for orientation, the articulation of interest in life, and the working through of emotion, within situations that are both sociohistorical and human. Hence these articles show how and why literature matters in manifold ways in and for human cultural life, and they show how philosophers and imaginative literary writers have continually both engaged with and criticized each other.

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