The Work of Literature read book FB2, DOC, EPUB
9780198733195 English 0198733194 This book presents a fresh approach to the question of the distinctiveness and value of literature, developing the author's influential earlier study, The Singularity of Literature, in a number of directions. The book includes an extensive cross-examination, in which Attridge poses and responds to a number of questions about the way we read and write about literature, its value to individuals and society, how it is best approached by readers and critics,and how it retains its power to give pleasure over decades and centuries. Other chapters address questions of ethics, critical responsiveness, singularity, emotions, metaphor, historical context, and the roleof hospitality in literary reading. Many specific examples are discussed, from Renaissance poetry to contemporary fiction. Although the focus of the book is on literature, the arguments are relevant to all the arts, and engage with the thought of major aesthetic theorists in a number of traditions., What is distinctive about the cultural practice called 'literature'? How does it benefit individuals and society? How do literary works retain their importance and their capacity to give pleasure over decades and centuries? What constitutes responsible criticism? These are some of the questions addressed in this book, which develops the arguments put forward in Derek Attridge's influential study The Singularity of Literature (2004). Beginning with an extended cross-examination in the form of an interview addressing a range of topics relating to the work of literature (understood both as the activity of the writer and as the text itself) and the practices of literary reading and literary criticism, it asks what it means to 'do justice to' a work of literature, provides a full account of the concept of singularity, considers the problematic power of criticism, and advances an account of the role of context in the writing and reading of literary works. In other chapters it explores the issue of cultural difference in responses to literature, discusses the working of metaphor, questions the attribution of knowledge to literary works, and addresses the topics of affect and hospitality. The book follows through the consequences of regarding the singular and inventive work of literature as an event that takes place anew each time it is read, providing an opening to an otherness excluded by prevailing cultural norms and habits of thought and feeling. Although the focus of the book is on literature, the arguments are relevant to all the arts, and engage with the thought of major aesthetic theorists in a number of traditions.
9780198733195 English 0198733194 This book presents a fresh approach to the question of the distinctiveness and value of literature, developing the author's influential earlier study, The Singularity of Literature, in a number of directions. The book includes an extensive cross-examination, in which Attridge poses and responds to a number of questions about the way we read and write about literature, its value to individuals and society, how it is best approached by readers and critics,and how it retains its power to give pleasure over decades and centuries. Other chapters address questions of ethics, critical responsiveness, singularity, emotions, metaphor, historical context, and the roleof hospitality in literary reading. Many specific examples are discussed, from Renaissance poetry to contemporary fiction. Although the focus of the book is on literature, the arguments are relevant to all the arts, and engage with the thought of major aesthetic theorists in a number of traditions., What is distinctive about the cultural practice called 'literature'? How does it benefit individuals and society? How do literary works retain their importance and their capacity to give pleasure over decades and centuries? What constitutes responsible criticism? These are some of the questions addressed in this book, which develops the arguments put forward in Derek Attridge's influential study The Singularity of Literature (2004). Beginning with an extended cross-examination in the form of an interview addressing a range of topics relating to the work of literature (understood both as the activity of the writer and as the text itself) and the practices of literary reading and literary criticism, it asks what it means to 'do justice to' a work of literature, provides a full account of the concept of singularity, considers the problematic power of criticism, and advances an account of the role of context in the writing and reading of literary works. In other chapters it explores the issue of cultural difference in responses to literature, discusses the working of metaphor, questions the attribution of knowledge to literary works, and addresses the topics of affect and hospitality. The book follows through the consequences of regarding the singular and inventive work of literature as an event that takes place anew each time it is read, providing an opening to an otherness excluded by prevailing cultural norms and habits of thought and feeling. Although the focus of the book is on literature, the arguments are relevant to all the arts, and engage with the thought of major aesthetic theorists in a number of traditions.