"Yet another remark,also bearing on Christian tragedies might be made about the conversion of Clorinda. Convinced though we may be of the immediate operations of grace, yet they can please us little on the stage, where everything that has to do with the character of the personages must arise from natural causes. We can only tolerate miracles in the physical world; in the moral everything must retain its natural course, because the theatre is to be the school of the moral world. The motives for every resolve, for every change of opinion or even thoughts, must be carefully balanced against each other so as to be in accordance with the hypothetical character, and must never produce more than they could produce in accordance with strict probability. The poet, by beauty of details, may possess the art of deluding us to overlook misproportions of this kind, but he only deceives us once and as soon as we are cool again we take back the applause he has lured from us"--
Many of the most influential thinkers and writers in fields as diverse as literary criticism, philosophy, psychoanalysis, sociology and history have posed the question: "What is literature?". Attempts to define literature lead to further questions: What is literature for? Who decides whether a written work is literature? What are the criteria? What sets literary language apart from ordinary language? What is Literature? A Critical Anthology addresses these and other fundamental questions in literary studies, bringing together essays spanning more than two centuries to explore our conceptions of literature and its meanings, values, and purposes.
Focusing on the Western literary tradition, this volume includes an introduction which discusses literature's foundations in ancient Greek philosophy, explores the emergence of literature as a distinct form in the eighteenth century, and provides insights into modern literary theory. The anthology features essays by figures central to the definition of literature as an idea, including Immanuel Kant, G.W.F. Hegel, Friedrich Nietzsche, Virginia Woolf and T.S. Eliot, and a selection of those who have called that idea into question, such as Jacques Derrida. Helene Cixous, Edward Said, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Jacques Ranciere.
Offering a carefully curated examination of the nature of literature, this book:
Presents diverse perspectives and reflections on the meanings of "literature"
Offers a wide-ranging selection of significant texts on literary theory
Includes essays by contemporary voices on literature and criticism
Features many complete and substantial selections, rather than excerpts.
Mark Robson is the Chair of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Dundee, Scotland, where he also teaches philosophy and visual culture. He founded and is the Director of the Centre for Critical and Creative Cultures at Dundee, and is author and editor of several books including Theatre & Death, The Sense of Early Modern Writing and (with James Loxley) Shakespeare, Jonson, and the Claims of the Performative.
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