PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE最新文献

{"title":"The Role of the Author in Literary Understanding","authors":"Nino Tevdoradze","doi":"10.1353/phl.2023.a913812","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/phl.2023.a913812","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Abstract:</p><p>The prevailing anti-authorial trend in contemporary mainstream literary theory and aesthetic anti-intentionalism produces different versions of \"the death of the author\" concept. Conversely, different forms of intentionalism in the analytic tradition strongly defend the relevance of authorial intentions. Although I agree with classic intentionalism on some key points, I find it untenable to believe that the meaning of a literary work is wholly dependent on the intentions of its creator. Rather I consider authorial meaning as one variety of literary meaning. My explanation of the part the author plays in literary understanding is consistent with Anders Pettersson's theory.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":51912,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-12-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138537199","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Middleman: Homer's Philosophical Rhapsody","authors":"Mark Glouberman","doi":"10.1353/phl.2023.a913814","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/phl.2023.a913814","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Abstract:</p><p>Although the <i>Iliad</i> is typically approached as a version of, say, <i>Catch-22</i>, the epic is not about armed conflict and its horrors. The war at Troy serves the poet as a metaphor for life. Advanced in the hexameters is an account of the genesis, and a defense, of the humanist view that men and women occupy an autonomous place midway between clods and gods. Plato's harsh criticism of Homer's work comes into focus once Achilles's transformation is interpreted along these philosophical lines. Homer is rejecting what Plato, who flattens human reality and calls it justice, endorses.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":51912,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-12-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138537252","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Aphorisms","authors":"Daniel Liebert","doi":"10.1353/phl.2023.a913817","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/phl.2023.a913817","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> Aphorisms <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Daniel Liebert </li> </ul> <blockquote> <p>One man alone is too much for one man alone.</p> —Antonio Porchia¹ </blockquote> <p>I<small>nspired by the</small> A<small>ntonio</small> Porchia quotation above, I have put aside aphorisms as varieties of \"wit and word\" games for a while to explore the question, \"Can the writing of aphorisms be a profoundly serious activity of the inner life?\" I hope to capture that \"too-much-ness\" of a man alone. We are all of us such intrinsically lovely, overwhelmed creatures.</p> <p><span>It is too late too soon.</span><span>Once I wasn't, but never again will I not have been.</span><span>An ugly city is an ugly idea about man.</span><span>A small boy prays to the God of small boys.</span><span>There is only truth—what else <em>could</em> there be?</span><span>The end of the poem is the oldest part of the poem.</span><span>Even this pellet of mouse dung is a <em>fated thing</em>.</span><span>Not even a handhold; a breathhold in this world is all.</span><span>Here evokes infinite elsewheres. <strong>[End Page 463]</strong></span> <span>I will die where I was born—<em>in medias res</em>.</span><span>To have had a destiny—how I would have loved that!</span><span>My secrets have secrets from me.</span><span>I don't want what I need—I hate what I need.</span></p> Daniel Liebert St. Louis, Missouri <h2>Footnotes</h2> <p>1. Antonio Porchia, \"Voices,\" trans. Gonzalo Melchor, unpublished manuscript, 2008.</p> Copyright © 2023 Johns Hopkins University Press ... </p>","PeriodicalId":51912,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-12-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138537198","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Literary Bias: Narrative and the Self","authors":"Daniel Just","doi":"10.1353/phl.2023.a913816","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/phl.2023.a913816","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Abstract:</p><p>Narratives are an interface that evolution has instilled in our brains for their optimal interaction with reality. Without them we would not be who we are: creatures that narrativize their experiences, integrate them into their autobiographical self, and imagine the future of this self. But narratives also distort reality by endowing it with meaning, purpose, and causality even when none exist. Literary stories with weak narrativity, such as those by Raymond Carver, remind us of another modality of the human mind and selfhood available to us, one that registers the world without subjecting it to narrative selection and chronological ordering.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":51912,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-12-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138537193","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Wilhelm Meister in Lucinde's Eyes: On Schlegel's Dispute with Goethe","authors":"Malwina Rolka, Paweł Jędrzejko","doi":"10.1353/phl.2023.a913808","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/phl.2023.a913808","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Abstract:</p><p>In 1798, Friedrich Schlegel published a review of <i>Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship</i>, extolling Johann Wolfgang Goethe's book as a masterpiece. At the same time, he commenced work on <i>Lucinde</i>, which caused a moral scandal and was criticized widely. Here, I retrace several threads of Schlegel's novel that testify to the fact that his assessment of Goethe's work may not have been so unequivocally favorable as it might seem at first sight. When looking at <i>Wilhelm Meister</i> through <i>Lucinde</i>'s eyes, we can see that Schlegel challenges the Goethean philosophy of man, and his novel remains the only consistent record of this criticism.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":51912,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-12-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138537196","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Veiled Meaning In Plato's Phaedrus: Dramatic Detail as a Guide for Philosophizing","authors":"Christopher Lee Adamczyk","doi":"10.1353/phl.2023.a913809","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/phl.2023.a913809","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Abstract:</p><p>In the <i>Phaedrus</i>, Plato provides an intriguing dramatic detail immediately before Socrates's first speech. \"I shall veil myself to speak,\" Socrates declares, \"so that I may run through the speech as quickly as possible and may not be at a complete loss from a sense of shame as I look towards you.\" In this essay, I argue that Socrates's veiling illustrates how authors of dialogic literature about philosophical topics subtly use dramatic and literary details to suggest preferred philosophical takeaways.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":51912,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-12-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138537250","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Playing the Dummy: Maugham, Smartphones, and the End of Elegance","authors":"Eric Bronson","doi":"10.1353/phl.2023.a913822","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/phl.2023.a913822","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> Playing the Dummy:<span>Maugham, Smartphones, and the End of Elegance</span> <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Eric Bronson </li> </ul> <h2>I</h2> <p>O<small>n the</small> R<small>ussian</small> T<small>rans</small>-S<small>iberian</small> train from Vladivostok to Petrograd (now St. Petersburg), an American businessman won't stop talking for the entire ten-day journey. In his story, \"A Chance Acquaintance,\" W. Somerset Maugham describes this 1917 meeting between Ashenden, a British character loosely based on himself, and the chatty American, named Harrington. The two passengers are blissfully unmoved by the revolution unfolding all around them. Ashenden casually suggests the two of them try and find another pair to pass the time playing bridge. Harrington refuses. \"It beats me how an intelligent man can waste his time card-playing,\" Harrington asserts, \"and of all the unintellectual pursuits I have ever seen it seems to me that solitaire is the worst. It kills conversation. Man is a social animal and he exercises the highest part of his nature when he takes part in social intercourse.\"¹ Ashenden doesn't understand the American's distaste for playing cards, especially bridge. \"'There is a certain elegance in wasting time,' said Ashenden . … 'Besides,' he added with bitterness, 'you can still talk.'\" <strong>[End Page 477]</strong></p> <p>Like many of his fictional characters, Maugham enjoyed eloquent, \"time-wasting\" games like bridge. Unlike solitaire, bridge encourages social interaction. Once, when his confounded bridge partner confronted Maugham with evidence that his high-class opponents were cheating, Maugham was nonplussed. \"They gave us double Martinis to start with,\" he noted, \"a slap-up lunch with a particularly good bottle of white Burgundy and old brandy with our coffee.\"² The dishonesty was irrelevant. For Maugham, a good bridge game, like the attendant conversation, should help temper one's moral outrage and skim over the unruly passions that so often plague our public and private lives. Elegance, for Maugham, meant presenting the appearance of calm and respectability, especially when such presentations conflicted with one's more turbulent emotions.</p> <p>In Maugham's short story \"The Three Fat Women of Antibes,\" the women around the bridge table desperately try to keep up appearances, both physically and emotionally. When passionate arguments inevitably threaten to undo the air of genteel conversation, Lena, the newest addition to the table, states, \"I think it's such a pity to quarrel over bridge. … After all, it's only a game.\"³ But while it might be true that bridge is \"only a game,\" Maugham took games seriously. Parlor games like bridge were spaces to practice and perfect the social mores on which colonial hierarchies were solidified. In Maugham's England, the game of life requ","PeriodicalId":51912,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-12-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138537194","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Thus Speaks Mr. Nobody: Brecht's Stories of Mr. Keuner through the Lensof Classical Chinese Dialectics","authors":"Wei Zhang","doi":"10.1353/phl.2023.a913813","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/phl.2023.a913813","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay presents a refreshing reading of Bertolt Brecht's Stories of Mr. Keuner through the lens of classical Chinese dialectics. Through careful analysis, I uncover not only interesting resonances between Brecht's stories and classical Chinese philosophy but also intriguing dialectic tensions between individual and clusters of stories in the collection, and between Brecht (the man, the artist, and his dramatic oeuvre) and Mr. Keuner (Mr. Nobody), his philosophical alter ego, as the titular character dialogues with his many interlocutors on momentous issues such as knowledge, power, justice, fatherland, and more.","PeriodicalId":51912,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139328576","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Stoppard's Philosophical Investigations; Or, Wittgenstein's Dogg's Hamlet","authors":"Fergus Edwards","doi":"10.1353/phl.2023.a899686","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/phl.2023.a899686","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Contenders for serious, let alone worthwhile, philosophical works consisting entirely of jokes are hard to find. Tom Stoppard's comedy Dogg's Hamlet, built from the materials of Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, might be one. Wittgenstein could only use previously acquired language to argue that social performance is a necessary prerequisite for the process of learning that meaningful language in the first place. But Stoppard's audiences can experience the inadequacy of a static, constative theory of language; then they can self-consciously undergo a socialized process of meaningful language acquisition. And that new language allows new jokes; so: did Stoppard put the wit into Wittgenstein?","PeriodicalId":51912,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43211323","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Enactment or Exploration: Two Roles for Philosophy in the Novel of Ideas","authors":"Donald Nordberg","doi":"10.1353/phl.2023.a899681","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/phl.2023.a899681","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:I examine the often-denigrated concept of the novel of ideas from its inception and critical decline to its relatively recent revival. Using a variant of the exploitation-exploration dilemma in psychology, I suggest that early usage referred to works that exploit philosophical principles—or better, enact them—by setting philosophical positions in conflict. By contrast, use of the concept for more recent works sees characters and plots exploring philosophical stances. The shift corresponds with the greater attention paid to complexity and ambiguity that are hallmarks of continental philosophy and neopragmatism, and with it greater need to explore philosophical stances through fiction.","PeriodicalId":51912,"journal":{"name":"PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44316640","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}