Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T07:17:01.973Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

24 - Criticism, aesthetics and analytic philosophy

from PHILOSOPHY, AESTHETICS AND LITERARY CRITICISM

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
Peter Lamarque
Edited by
Christa Knellwolf  and
Christopher Norris
Christa Knellwolf
Affiliation:
Australian National University, Canberra
Christopher Norris
Affiliation:
University of Wales College of Cardiff
Get access

Summary

The input to critical theory from so-called ‘continental’ (principally French and German) philosophy is well known and well documented. A somewhat less well known, less widely acknowledged, philosophical contribution to theoretical accounts of literature and criticism comes from ‘analytic philosophy’. Nevertheless, there is a substantial body of work from the analytic tradition in what has come to be known as ‘philosophy of literature’ and it is by no means confined to the English-speaking world. This essay will map out this contribution and assess its significance.

Analytic philosophy and related movements

The very idea of ‘analytic philosophy’ is contested and resists uncontroversial definition. Philosophers as different as Gottlob Frege and G. E. Moore, Rudolf Carnap and J. L. Austin, W. V. O. Quine and P. F. Strawson, the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and the Wittgenstein of the Philosophical Investigations have been called ‘analytic’ and it is hard to speak with confidence of common definitive elements. Nor is the epithet ‘Anglo-American’ (in contrast to ‘continental’) especially apt as leading figures, such as Frege, Wittgenstein, Friedrich Waismann, Moritz Schlick and other members of the Vienna Circle, came from Continental Europe. Other designations are sometimes used interchangeably with ‘analytic philosophy’, notably ‘linguistic philosophy’, ‘ordinary language philosophy’, even ‘philosophy of language’, but again only confusion results from running these together.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism , pp. 323 - 334
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2001

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barnes, Annette, On Interpretation: A Critical Analysis, Oxford: Blackwell, 1988.Google Scholar
Beardsley, Monroe C., Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism, New York: Harcourt Brace, 1958.Google Scholar
Beardsley, Monroe C., The Possibility of Criticism, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1970.Google Scholar
Black, Max, ‘Metaphor’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 55 (1954–1955).Google Scholar
Black, Max, ‘Metaphor’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 55 (1954–55).Google Scholar
Brand, Peggy Z. and Korsmeyer, Carolyn (eds.), Feminism and Tradition in Aesthetics, University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Budd, Malcolm, Values of Art: Pictures, Poetry and Music, Harmondsworth: The Penguin Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Carroll, Noël, A Philosophy of Mass Art, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Cooper, David E., Metaphor, Oxford: Blackwell, 1986.Google Scholar
Crittenden, Charles, Unreality: The Metaphysics of Fictional Objects, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Currie, Gregory, The Nature of Fiction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dadlez, E. M., What's Hecuba to Him? Fictional Events and Actual Emotions, Philadelphia: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Danto, Arthur C., The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981.Google Scholar
Davidson, Donald, ‘What Metaphors Mean’, Critical Inquiry 5 (1978).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davies, Stephen, Definitions of Art, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Dickie, George, The Art Circle: A Theory of Art, New York: Haven, 1984.Google Scholar
Dummett, Michael, Origins of Analytical Philosophy, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Eldridge, Richard, On Moral Personhood: Philosophy, Literature, Criticism, and Self- Understanding, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Ellis, John M., The Theory of Literary Criticism: A Logical Analysis, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1974.Google Scholar
Falck, Colin, Myth, Truth and Literature, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Feagin, Susan L., Reading with Feeling: The Aesthetics of Appreciation, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Fogelin, Robert E., Figuratively Speaking, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988.Google Scholar
Frege, Gottlob, The Foundations of Arithmetic: A Logico-Mathematical Enquiry into the Concept of Number (Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, 1893, 1903), trans. Austin, J. L., Oxford: Blackwell, 1953, 2nd edn.Google Scholar
Goodman, Nelson, The Languages of Art, New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1968.Google Scholar
Goodman, Nelson, Ways of Worldmaking, Brighton: Harvester Press, 1978.Google Scholar
Hirsch, E. D. Jr., Validity in Interpretation, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967.Google Scholar
Hjort, Mette and , Sue Laver (eds.), Emotion and the Arts, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Hospers, John, Meaning and Truth in the Arts, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1946.Google Scholar
Iseminger, Gary (ed.), Intention and Interpretation, Philadelphia: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Kittay, Eva Feder, Metaphor: Its Cognitive Force and Structure, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986.Google Scholar
Krautz, Michael, Rightness and Reasons: Interpretation in Cultural Practices, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Lamarque, Peter and Olsen, Stein Haugom, Truth, Fiction, and Literature: A Philosophical Perspective, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Lamarque, Peter, Fictional Points of View, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Levinson, JerroldMusic, Art, and Metaphysics: Essays in Philosophical Aesthetics, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Levinson, Jerrold (ed.), Aesthetics and Ethics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Lewis, David, ‘Truth in Fiction’, American Philosophical Quarterly 15 (1978).Google Scholar
Livingston, Paisley, Literary Knowledge: Humanistic Enquiry and the Philosophy of Science, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Margolis, Joseph, Art and Philosophy: Conceptual Issues in Aesthetics, Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1980.Google Scholar
Margolis, Joseph, Interpretation; Radical but not Unruly: The New Puzzle of the Arts and History, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Meinong, A., On Assumptions, ed. and trans. Keanue, James, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.Google Scholar
Meinong, Alexius, ‘Theory of Objects’, in Chisholm, R. M., (ed.) Realism and the Background of Phenomenology (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1960).Google Scholar
Miller, Richard W., ‘Truth in Beauty’, American Philosophical Quarterly 16 (1979).Google Scholar
Mothersill, Mary, Beauty Restored (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984).Google Scholar
Murdoch, Iris, Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, London: Chatto & Windus, 1992.Google Scholar
Newton-de Molina, David (ed.), On Literary Intention, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1976.Google Scholar
Novitz, David, Knowledge, Fiction and Imagination, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Nussbaum, Martha, Love's Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Nussbaum, Martha, Poetic Justice: The Literary Imagination and Public Life, Boston: Beacon Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Ohmann, Richard, ‘Speech Acts and the Definition of Literature’, Philosophy and Rhetoric 4 (1971).Google Scholar
Olsen, Stein Haugom, The End of Literary Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olsen, Stein Haugom, The Structure of Literary Understanding, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ortony, Andrew (ed.), Metaphor and Thought, 2nd edn., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parsons, Terence, Nonexistent Objects, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980.Google Scholar
Quine, W. V. O., From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1953.Google Scholar
Rabinowitz, Peter J., ‘Speech Acts and Literary Studies’, in Selden, Raman, (ed.) The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, vol. 8 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).Google Scholar
Radford, Colin, ‘How Can We be Moved by the Fate of Anna Karenina?’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, suppl. vol. 49 (1975).Google Scholar
Richards, I. A., Principles of Literary Criticism, London: Paul Trench Trubner, 1924.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rorty, Richard (ed.), The Linguistic Turn: Recent Essays in Philosophical Method, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1970.Google Scholar
Russell, Bertrand, Logic and Knowledge, ed. Marsh, R. C., London: George Allen and Unwin, 1956.Google Scholar
Searle, John R., Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shusterman, Richard, Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking Art, Oxford: Blackwell, 1992.Google Scholar
Stecker, Robert, Artworks: Definition, Meaning, Value, Philadelphia: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Tolhurst, William E., ‘On What a Text is and How it Means’, British Journal of Aesthetics 19(1979).Google Scholar
van Inwagen, Peter, ‘Creatures of Fiction’, American Philosophical Quarterly 14 (1977).Google Scholar
Walsh, Dorothy, Literature and Knowledge, Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1969.Google Scholar
Walton, Kendall L., Mimesis as Make-Believe, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Weitz, Morris, ‘Hamlet’ and the Philosophy of Literary Criticism, London: Faber & Faber, 1965.Google Scholar
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations, trans. Anscombe, G. E. M., Oxford, Blackwell, 1953.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×