Narrative Ethics
Adam Zachary Newton(Author)
Harvard University Press
Published on 1. January 1995
Book
Hardback
352 pages
978-0-674-60087-4 (ISBN)
Description
The ethics of literature, formalists have insisted, resides in the moral quality of a character, a story, perhaps the relation between author and reader. But in the wake of deconstruction and various forms of criticism focusing on difference, the ethical question has been freshly negotiated by literary studies. This text, winner of the Thomas J. Wilson Prize, makes a case for understanding narrative as ethics. Assuming an intrinsic and necessary connection between the two, Newton explores the ethical consequences of telling stories and fictionalizing character, and the reciprocal claims binding teller, listener, witness and reader in the process. He treats these relations as defining properties of prose fiction, of particular import in 19th- and 20th-century texts. Newton's readings cover a wide range of authors and periods, including Charles Dickens, Herman Melville, Joseph Conrad, Julian Barnes and Kazuo Ishiguro. A work of theory as well as a critical performance, "Narrative Ethics" also stakes a claim for itself as moral inquiry.
To that end, Newton links the ethical-philosophical projects of Emmanuel Levinas, Stanley Cavell and Mikhail Bakhtin as a kind of chorus for his textual analyses - a bridge between philosophy's ear and literary criticism's voice. His work should be relevant to scholars and students of English and American literature, as well as specialists in narrative and literary theory, hermeneutics and contemporary philosophy.
To that end, Newton links the ethical-philosophical projects of Emmanuel Levinas, Stanley Cavell and Mikhail Bakhtin as a kind of chorus for his textual analyses - a bridge between philosophy's ear and literary criticism's voice. His work should be relevant to scholars and students of English and American literature, as well as specialists in narrative and literary theory, hermeneutics and contemporary philosophy.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge, Mass
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
index
Dimensions
Height: 241 mm
Width: 161 mm
Weight
640 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-674-60087-4 (9780674600874)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Adam Zachary Newton
Narrative Ethics
E-Book
07/2009
Harvard University Press
€27.89
Available for download
Content
Narrative as ethics; toward a narrative ethics; we die in a last word - Conrad's "Lord Jim" and Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio"; lessons of (for) the master - short fiction by Henry James; creating the uncreated features of his face - monstration in Crane, Melville and Wright; telling others - secrecy and recognition in Dickens, Barnes and Ishiguro; conclusion.