Literature and Understanding

This book investigates potential cognitive gain from the close analysis of literary texts. Providing a challenge to the anti-cognitivist position, it argues that cognitive gain is relevant to our aesthetic appreciation of literature. The author locates cognitive gain in the verstehen tradition and identifies five relevant senses of understanding to make the innovative case that reading literary fiction as literature stimulates the relevant senses of understanding. Using examples such as irony, metaphor, ambiguity and repetition, it shows that relevant senses of understanding may bridge the gap between understanding a literary text and understanding the world beyond the text.

Literature and Understanding investigates the cognitive gain from literature by focussing on a reader's close analysis of a literary text. It examines the meaning of 'literature', outlines the most prominent positions in the literary cognitivism debate, explores the practice of close reading from a philosophical perspective, provides a fresh account of what we mean by 'understanding' and in so doing opens up a new area of research in the philosophy of literature.

This book provides a different reply to the challenge that we can't learn anything worthwhile from reading literary fiction. It makes the innovative case that reading literary fiction as literature rather than as fiction stimulates five relevant senses of understanding. The book uses examples of irony, metaphor, play with perspective and ambiguity to illustrate this contention. Before arguing that these five senses of understanding bridge the gap between our understanding of a literary text and our understanding of the world beyond that text.

The book will be of great interest for researchers, scholars and post-graduate students in the fields of aesthetics, literary theory, literature in education and pedagogy.

Autorentext

J. W. Phelan is Director of Studies in Philosophy at Wolfson College and at Homerton College, Cambridge. His research focusses on many different issues in the philosophy of literature and literary criticism.

Zusammenfassung

Literature and Understanding investigates the cognitive gain from literature by focussing on a reader's close analysis of a literary text. It examines the meaning of 'literature', outlines the most prominent positions in the literary cognitivism debate, explores the practice of close reading from a philosophical perspective, provides a fresh account of what we mean by 'understanding' and in so doing opens up a new area of research in the philosophy of literature.

This book provides a different reply to the challenge that we can't learn anything worthwhile from reading literary fiction. It makes the innovative case that reading literary fiction as literature rather than as fiction stimulates five relevant senses of understanding. The book uses examples of irony, metaphor, play with perspective and ambiguity to illustrate this contention. Before arguing that these five senses of understanding bridge the gap between our understanding of a literary text and our understanding of the world beyond that text.

The book will be of great interest for researchers, scholars and post-graduate students in the fields of aesthetics, literary theory, literature in education and pedagogy.

Inhalt

1. Literary Fiction as a Subgenre of Both Literature and Fiction. 2. Literary Cognitivism, Anti-cognitivism and Non-cognitivism. 3. Understanding Others from Understanding Literary Fiction. 4. The Cognitive Gain from Reading Literary Fiction as Literature. 5.How Understanding Literary Fiction relates to the World beyond Literary Fiction