Inconvenient Fictions
Literature and the Limits of Theory
Bernard T. Harrison(Author)
Yale University Press
Published on 23. October 1991
Book
Hardback
304 pages
978-0-300-05057-8 (ISBN)
Description
This book engages some of the important issues in literary theory and literary study, investigating the structuralist and post-structuralist denial that cognitive gains can be made from the reading of fiction and poetry, and seeking to reverse this estimate of the relative epistemic credentials of literature and theory. Its thesis is that the boundaries between literary texts and "natural reality" are permeable in subtler ways than are allowed for in current accounts of "literary language", and that in consequence literary fictions are capable of exploring real possibilities. The book pursuses these themes through both critical and theoretical discussion of a wide variety of texts and authors, with sections on biblical parable, Shakespeare, Sterne, Wordsworth, E.M. Forster, Muriel Spark, Frank Kermode, Derrida de Man and others.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
notes, index
Dimensions
Height: 162 mm
Width: 240 mm
Weight
675 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-300-05057-8 (9780300050578)
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Schweitzer Classification
Content
How to reconcile humanism and deconstruction; the defence of wit - Sterne, Locke, and the particular; Forster and Moore; deconstructing Derrida; Muriel Spark and Jane Austen; the text as interrogator - Muriel Spark and Job; rhetoric and the self; parable and transcendence; secrets and surfaces; the truth about metaphor.