Canons and Consequences: Reflections on the Ethical Force of Imaginative IdealsWhat does our literary past offer the present? Using his grasp of the full range of contemporary philosophical and literary stances, Charles Altieri in Canons and Consequences? offers a fascinating dialogue between cultures which should influence how we understand the purposes of literary education. This book takes the debate about the canon as a crucial test case for how competing perspectives in literary theory approach the subject of values. Altieri belives that the dominant poststructural perspectives are severely flawed by their inability to project or assess idealizations. He tries to define alternative principles for making value judgments, and he finds these principles within the traditional texts and discourses preserved by a high literary canon. |
Contents
An Idea and Ideal of Literary Canon | 21 |
Canons and Differences | 49 |
Wittgenstein | 81 |
Copyright | |
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abstract aesthetic agency agents Alcibiades alternative Angel Medina arguments articulate audience authority basic becomes Cambridge canon claims complex concept contemporary criteria critical cultural deconstruction define Derrida desire develop differences discourse efforts eloquence enable essay establish ethical example expressive expressivist Finnegans Wake first-person force forms G.E.M. Anscombe grammar historicism human ical idea ideal identification identity imaginative implicature individual insist interests interpretive Jacques Derrida Jean-François Lyotard judging judgment justice Kant Kant's language games limits literary literary theory Lyotard means ment modes moral normative one's ourselves passion person Phaedrus philosophical Plato plausible play poetic poetry political position possible Postmodern poststructural practices principles problems questions rational Rawls reading reasons relation rely resistance rhetoric role semantic sense simply social Socrates specific stances sublime texts Thébaud theory Theory of Justice third-person tions traditional canon understand University Press values Wittgenstein Wordsworth