Literature and truth : imaginative writing as a medium for ideas / by Richard Lansdown.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lansdown, Richard, 1961- author.

Series:

Costerus ; Volume 222.

Costerus New Series, 0165-9618 ; Volume 222

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Imagination in literature.

Literature--History and criticism.

Literature.

Literature--Philosophy.

Literature--Aesthetics.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (222 pages).

Place of Publication:

Leiden, Netherlands ; Boston, [Massachusetts] : Brill Rodopi, 2018.

Summary:

In Literature and Truth Richard Lansdown continues a discussion concerning the truth-bearing status of imaginative literature that pre-dates Plato. The book opens with a general survey of contemporary approaches in philosophical aesthetics, and a discussion of the contribution to the question made by British philosopher R. G. Collingwood in particular, in his Speculum Mentis . It then offers six case-studies from the Romantic era to the contemporary one as to how imaginative authors have variously dealt with bodies of discursive thought such as Stoicism, Christianity, evolution, humanism, and socialism. It concludes with a reading going in the other direction, in which the diary of Bronislaw Malinowski is seen in terms of the anthropologist’s reading habits during his legendary Trobriander fieldwork.

Contents:

Front Matter

Contents

Preface

Part 1

“Nothing Affirms and Therefore Never Lieth”: Cognitive and Non-cognitive Accounts of Imaginative Literature

“The Birthplace of Truth”: Collingwood’s Speculum Mentis

Part 2

The Printed Medium: Wordsworth and Books

Stoicism and Christianity: Byron’s Don Juan

Evangelicalism and Evolution: James Montgomery’s Pelican Island

Tragedy and Evolution: Hardy’s The Woodlanders

Humanism and After: Ibsen’s Little Eyolf

Politics and Art: James Kelman’s Not Not While the Giro

From the Other Shore: Bronislaw Malinowski’s A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term

Conclusion.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

90-04-35685-1

OCLC:

1011104233

Publisher Number:

10.1163/9789004356856 DOI