Cover -- Table of Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- 1 Institutionalism and Ideality -- 2 A New Spin on the Old Words': Criticism and Philosophy -- 2.1 Richard Rorty -- 2.2 Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor -- 2.3 Martha Nussbaum -- 3 These Shafts Can Conquer Troy, These Shafts Alone': Criticism and Psychoanalysis -- 3.1 Freud -- 3.2 Object relations -- 3.3 The Secret Sharer' -- 4 A Province of Truth': Criticism and History -- 4.1 R.G. Collingwood -- 4.2 New Historicism -- 4.3 Hayden White and Paul Ricoeur -- 5 Four Objections -- 5.1 Approaching' literature -- 5.2 What institutionalists say and what they mean -- 5.3 Who, we? Effects on readers -- 5.4 Derrida again -- Notes.
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In the aftermath of the theory wars, the imaginative, formal, and moral features of literature have been substantially marginalized, downgraded, and neglected. Yet for many readers such elements will always be central to the experience of reading, just as for writers they are central to the experience of writing. This study argues that literature has an abundant life of its own, and reconsiders that life in the contexts provided by three influential contemporary groups of critics: some North American philosophers some psychoanalysts and some theorists of history.
Autonomy of literature.
0333921348
Criticism-- Great Britain-- History-- 20th century.
Criticism-- History-- 20th century.
Criticism-- United States-- History-- 20th century.
Literature, Modern-- 20th century-- History and criticism.