LITERATURE AND ETHICS

Abstract

“Literature is the teacher of ethics” (Temkov). If one assumes that literature reflects life, then it only serves to pedagogically illustrate classic questions: how one should behave towards one’s fellow human beings, what virtue and vice are, how conflicts arise and how they are to be solved and which are the highest goods are in life. However, literature itself teaches us much more: it touches delicate issues that no other medium would dare to do. Only literary works can delicately, profoundly and provocative handle questions like love, war, guilt, (un)justice. The modern moral standards would not allow Lolita, Tadzio, or Törleß. New theories of literature and ethics focus on the reading process because ‘literary fiction debates norms and values’. In this paper, the attempt has been made to acknowledge the value of theme diversity in literature in order to broaden the limits of moral dilemmas, but also to discuss the cultural influence, as well as the role of the narrative, author and reader in the comprehension of ethical questions. Bernhard Schlink’s “The Reader” and Peter Handke`s “Winter Journey” are only the tip of the iceberg concerning a much broader topic realm.