The Ethics of Literary Communication
Genuineness, directness, indirectness
Published on 25. September 2013
Book
Hardback
271 pages
978-90-272-1036-4 (ISBN)
Description
Viewing literature as one among other forms of communication, Roger D. Sell and his colleagues evaluate writer-respondent relationships according to the same ethical criterion as applies for dialogue of any other kind. In a nutshell: Are writers and readers respecting each other's human autonomy? If and when the answer here is "Yes!", Sell's team describe the communication that is going on as 'genuine'. In this latest book, they offer new illustrations of what they mean by this, and ask whether genuineness is compatible with communicational directness and communicational indirectness. Is there a risk, for instance, that a very direct manner of writing could be unacceptably coercive, or that a more indirect manner could be irresponsible, or positively deceitful? The book's overall conclusion is: "Not necessarily!" A directness which is truthful and stimulates free discussion does respect the integrity of the other person. And the same is true of an indirectness which encourages readers themselves to contribute to the construction and assessment of ideas, stories and experiences - sometimes literary indirectness may allow greater scope for genuineness than does the directness of a non-literary letter. By way of illustrating these points, the book opens up new lines of inquiry into a wide range of literary texts from Britain, Germany, France, Denmark, Poland, Romania, and the United States.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Amsterdam
Netherlands
Target group
College/higher education
Illustrations
+ index
Weight
665 gr
ISBN-13
978-90-272-1036-4 (9789027210364)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Roger D. Sell | Adam Borch | Inna Lindgren
The Ethics of Literary Communication
Genuineness, directness, indirectness
E-Book
09/2013
1st Edition
John Benjamins Publishing Company
€118.99
Available for download
Persons
Content
1. Acknowledgements; 2. Contributors; 3. Chapter 1. Introduction (by Sell, Roger D.); 4. Chapter 2. Herbert's considerateness: A communicational assessment (by Sell, Roger D.); 5. Chapter 3. "Not my readers but the readers of their own selves": Literature as communication with the self in Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu (by Orhanen, Anna); 6. Chapter 4. Intersubjective positioning and community-making: E. E. Cummings's Preface to his Collected Poems 1923-1958 (by Saki, Mohamed); 7. Chapter 5. Genuine and distorted communication in autobiographical writing: E. M. Forster's "West Hackhurst" and its contexts (by Finch, Jason); 8. Chapter 6. Women and the public sphere: Pope's addressivity through The Dunciad (by Borch, Adam); 9. Chapter 7. Kipling, his narrator, and public interest (by Lindgren, Inna); 10. Chapter 8. Call and response: Autonomy and dialogicity in Isaac Bashevis Singer's The Penitent (by Stromberg, David); 11. Chapter 9. Hypothetical action: Poetry under erasure in Blake, Dickinson and Eliot (by Pettersson, Bo); 12. Chapter 10. Metacommunication as ritual: Contemporary Romanian poetry (by Popescu, Carmen); 13. Chapter 11. Terminal aposiopesis and sublime communication: Shakespeare's Sonnet 126 and Keats's "To Autumn" (by Sell, Jonathan P.A.); 14. Chapter 12. The utopian horizon of communication: Ernst Bloch's Traces and Johann-Peter Hebel's Treasure Chest (by Siebers, Johan); 15. Chapter 13. When philosophy must become literature: Soren Kierkegaard's concept of indirect communication (by Husch, Sebastian); 16. Chapter 14. An aesthetics of indirection in novels and letters: Balzac's communication with Evelina Hanska (by Szypula, Ewa); 17. Chapter 15. Letters from a (post-)troubled city: Epistolary communication in Ciaran Carson's The Pen Friend (by Conan, Catherine); 18. Index