From Text to Literature: New Analytic and Pragmatic Approaches

217 Pages·2005·0.959 MB·English

by  Stein Haugom Olsen, Anders Pettersson (eds.)

From Text to Literature
Also by Stein Haugom Olsen
THE STRUCTURE OF LITERARY UNDERSTANDING
THE END OF LITERARY THEORY
TRUTH, FICTION, AND LITERATURE: A PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVE
(with Peter Lamarque)
AESTHETICS AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART: THE ANALYTIC TRADITION
(co-editor with Peter Lamarque)
SELF-FASHIONING AND METAMORPHOSIS IN ENGLISH RENAISSANCE
LITERATURE (co-editor with Olav Lausund)
Also by Anders Pettersson
REALISM SOM TERMINOLOGISKT PROBLEM. NÅGRA DEFINITIONER I
MODERN LITTERATURVETENSKAP OCH DERAS GILTIGHET
VERKBEGREPPET. EN LITTERATURTEORETISK UNDERSÖKNING
A THEORY OF LITERARY DISCOURSE
VERBAL ART. A PHILOSOPHY OF LITERATURE AND LITERARY EXPERIENCE
LITTERATUR OCH VERKLIGHETSFÖRSTÅELSE. IDÉMÄSSIGA ASPEKTER AV
1900-TALETS LITTERATUR (co-editor with Torsten Pettersson and Anders Tyrberg)
TYPES OF INTERPRETATION IN THE AESTHETIC DISCIPLINES
(co-editor with Staffan Carlshamre)
From Text to Literature
New Analytic and Pragmatic Approaches
Edited by
Stein Haugom Olsen
and
Anders Pettersson
Editorial matter,selection,Introduction,Chapter 1 and Chapter 5
© Stein Haugom Olsen and Anders Pettersson 2005
All remaining chapters © Palgrave Macmillan 2005
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2005 978-1-4039-9332-8
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DOI 10.1057/9780230524170
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Text and experience :new analytic and pragmatic approaches to the
study of literature / edited by Stein Haugom Olsen and Anders
Pettersson.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Literature – Philosophy. I. Olsen,Stein Haugom,1946–
II. Pettersson,Anders,1946–
PN49.T4435 2005
801 – dc22
2005042909
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05
Contents
Notes on the Contributors viii
Acknowledgements x
Introduction 1
Stein Haugom Olsen and Anders Pettersson
1 The Concept of Literature: an Institutional Account 11
Stein Haugom Olsen
I. Literature as a social institution: the sociological
perspective 11
II. The institution theory of art 14
III. An institutional account of literature 19
IV. Objections to the institutional account of literature 21
V. The theory of multiple interpretative communities 27
VI. Conclusion 31
2 Aesthetic Experience and a Belletristic Definition
of Literature 36
Paisley Livingston
I. Introduction 36
II. Conceptual priorities: art and the aesthetic 36
III. Concepts aesthetic 37
IV. Aesthetic value and the definition of literature 45
3 Art, Literature and Value 52
Lars-Olof Åhlberg
I. Introduction 52
II. The concept of art 53
III. The concept of literature 62
4 Components of Literariness: Readings of Capote’s
In Cold Blood 82
Torsten Pettersson
I. Introduction 82
II. Literariness and fictionality 84
III. Truman Capote’s account of a multiple murder 88
IV. Components of literariness 1: expressiveness 90
v
vi Contents
V. Components of literariness 2: representativity 92
VI. Components of literariness 3: form 96
VII. The role of fictionality 98
VIII. Towards a more comprehensive understanding 100
5 The Concept of Literature: a Description and
an Evaluation 106
Anders Pettersson
I. Introduction 106
II. The everyday concept of literature 108
III. Specialized concepts of literature 110
IV. Attempts at defining ‘literature’ 113
V. The concept’s critics 118
VI. An evaluation of the concept of literature 121
6 Literature as a Textualist Notion 128
Bo Pettersson
I. Some terminological considerations 128
II. From oral to digital texts: on textualization and
textual scholarship 129
III. The rise and fall of textualism in the humanities,
especially literary studies 133
IV. The textual aspect of literary studies today 140
7 The Literary Work as Pragmatist Experience 146
Erik Bjerck Hagen
I. Introduction 146
II. Experience in Dewey and James 147
III. The structure of a literary experience 153
IV. Experiencing The Portrait of a Lady 154
8 The Poem as Perfect Sensate Discourse: Literature
and Cognition According to Baumgarten 165
Søren Kjørup
I. Introduction 165
II. Poetry, truth – and a little bit more 167
III. The enlightenment of concepts 168
IV. The aesthetic paradox and the concept of taste 170
V. Geometric poetics 171
VI. Sensate cognition 173
VII. The rules for attaining perfect sensate discourse 174
VIII. Aesthetics as epistemology 176
Contents vii
IX. Sensuousness, aesthetic analysis, and things in
themselves 178
X. Kant and Baumgarten 179
XI. Emotive and cognitive language 180
XII. A belletristic concept of literature 182
Bibliography 187
Index 203
Notes on the Contributors
Lars-Olof Åhlberg is Professor of Aesthetics in the Department of
Philosophy, Uppsala University, and editor of The Nordic Journal of
Aesthetics. He is currently Researcher in Comparative Aesthetics with the
Swedish Research Council. His publications include articles in philo-
sophical aesthetics, the aesthetics of music, cultural theory and analy-
sis, in particular on postmodernism in philosophy and aesthetics, as
well as contributions to the philosophy of the humanities. His work has
been published in The British Journal of Aesthetics,The Journal of Aesthetic
Education, Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft, and
The Nordic Journal of Aesthetics.
Erik Bjerck Hagen is Professor of Comparative Literature at the Uni-
versity of Bergen, Norway. His books include Allegories of Action: Truth
and Ethics in Melville, Dickens, Henry James and Paul de Man (1997), as
well as several books in Norwegian about literary theory, literary inter-
pretation, and literary evaluation.
Søren Kjørup is Professor of Theory and History of the Humanities at
Roskilde University, Denmark. Most of Professor Kjørup’s scholarly
production is in Danish, and he has published articles on aesthetics,
pictorial speech acts, and semiotics of the cinema in English. His
book on the nature of the humanities has been published in German:
Humanities, Geisteswissenschaften, Sciences humaines (2001).
Paisley Livingston is Professor of Philosophy at Lingnan University,
Hong Kong. His books include Ingmar Bergman and the Rituals of Art
(1982),Literary Knowledge: Humanistic Inquiry and the Philosophy of Science
(1988),Models of Desire: René Girard and the Psychology of Mimesis (1992),
Literature and Rationality (1991), and Art and Intention: a Philosophical
Study (2005). With Berys Gaut he has edited The Creation of Art (2003).
He has published papers on a range of topics in philosophy and litera-
ture, aesthetics, and cinema studies.
Stein Haugom Olsenis Chair Professor of Philosophy and Head of the
Department of Philosophy at Lingnan University, Hong Kong. His books
includeThe Structure of Literary Understanding (1978),The End of Literary
viii
Notes on the Contributors ix
Theory (1987), and (with Peter Lamarque) Truth, Fiction, and Literature:
a Philosophical Perspective (1994). He has edited, with Olav Lausund, Self-
Fashioning and Metamorphosis in English Renaissance Literature (2003),
and, with Peter Lamarque, Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art: the Ana-
lytic Tradition: an Anthology (2004). He has published papers on a range
of topics in aesthetics, philosophy of literature, and literary criticism.
He is an elected fellow of the Norwegian Academy of Science and
Letters.
Anders Pettersson is Professor of Swedish and Comparative Literature
in the Department of Scandinavian Languages and Comparative
Literature, Umeå University, Sweden, and a member of the executive
board of the International Federation for Modern Languages and
Literatures (FILLM). His most recent book is Verbal Art: a Philosophy of
Literature and Literary Experience (2000). With Staffan Carlshamre he has
edited Types of Interpretation in the Aesthetic Disciplines (2003).
Bo Pettersson is Professor of the Literature of the United States at the
University of Helsinki, Finland, and Director of the Finnish Graduate
School of Literary Studies. His publications are mostly on literary inter-
pretation and aesthetics, including The World According to Kurt Vonnegut:
Moral Paradox and Narrative Form (1994) and the co-edited volume
Cognition and Literary Interpretation in Practice (in press).
Torsten Pettersson is Professor of Literature at Uppsala University,
Sweden. He has published books on Joseph Conrad (1982) and Eyvind
Johnson (1986); Literary Interpretation: Current Models and a New Depar-
ture (1988);Gåtans namn (The Name of the Enigma,2001), a study of the
oeuvres of nine pioneers of Scandinavian literary modernism; and Dolda
principer(Hidden Principles, 2002), a collection of studies in cultural and
literary theory. For his work in literary history, he was awarded the
Schück Prize for the year 2000 by the Swedish Academy. He has also
published a collection of short stories and seven collections of poetry.