This article offers a comparative study of the book as a personification character in a Roman manuscript culture on the one hand and a Danish print culture 1700 years later on the other. To the classical poets Horace and Ovid the book is an obedient son or a male slave just about to be freed; to the Dano-Norwegian poet Petter Dass (1647–1707) and his contemporaries, the book is a daughter whom the poet urges to go out into the world, offering her services. The author argues that this peculiar gender bender and role reversal may be explained by the great communication shift of the modern era.
This article proposes to define literary fiction as any text which is published with the explicit intention that the reader must treat it as if it were fictive. This definition is independent of the authors knowlegde of the texts fictionality or the reality of its narrative elements and thus excuses him/her from any responsibility for the truth of apparently real elements embedded in the fictional story. Historical facts embedded in a novel need verification in order to be treated as real, and as a consequence the author cannot be credited for them as scientific facts and is not obliged to state his/her sources.
Many philosophers take it that there is an important distinction between philosophical and literary or aesthetic approaches to literature, and that the philosophical interest in literature lies in providing interesting examples or presenting a difficult train of thought in a more pedagogical way. My worry is that this way of unpacking the problematic fails to achieve the full potential of philosophical criticism of literature. I present a reading of one of Raymond Carvers famous short stories to clarify my view on the potential of philosophical criticism of literature. I commence my paper by taking Lamarque and Haugom Olsens distinction between philosophy in and through literature into consideration. My discussion will then be related to some of Stanley Cavells thoughts about the relationship between literature and philosophy and the form of skepticism to which he takes much literature to have responded.
My aim in this paper is twofold. I seek to introduce the religious turn in continental thought and suggest its potential impact for literary studies. With reference to thinkers such as John D. Caputo, Gianni Vattimo, Jacques Derrida and Maurice Blanchot, I focus on three main concepts: the secret, the future to come and the unreadable. These concepts are chosen because they seem to inspire both literary and religious reflections. My general hypothesis is that literary studies and religious thought today are related in that they address a certain weakening of structures and of concepts. Literature, because it is always open to new interpretation, has no final meaning waiting to be deciphered. It represents, instead, a call from an empty, indecipherable secret to come. Concepts of Meaning and Truth are weakened. The religious turn is based on a similar weakening of the concept of a metaphysical, omnipotent God and the dualistic structures (body-spirit, profane-holy, immanent-transcendent, etc.) that keep Him in place. Based on this comparison, it is possible to see how the religious turn that we are witnessing today can emerge as a new provider of relevant concepts for literary studies.