A Sense of the World: Essays on Fiction, Narrative, and Knowledge

by John Gibson (Editor), Wolfgang Huemer (Editor), Luca Pocci (Editor)

Overview

A team of leading contributors from both philosophical and literary backgrounds have been brought together in this impressive book to examine how works of literary fiction can be a source of knowledge. Together, they analyze the important trends in this current popular debate.

The innovative feature of this volume is that it mixes work by literary theorists and scholars with work of analytic philosophers that combined together provide a comprehensive statement of the variety of ways in which works of fiction can engage questions of worldly interest. It uses the problem of cognitive value to explore:

• literature’s contribution to ethical life
• literature’s ability to engage in social and political critique
• the role narrative plays in opening up possibilities of moral, aesthetic, experience and selfhood

This remarkable volume will attract the attention of both literature and philosophy scholars with its statement of the various ways that literature and life take an interest in one another.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415875530
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	09/17/2009
Series:	Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	360
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

John Gibson is Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Temple University, USA. He is co-editor (with Wolfgang Huemer) of The Literary Wittgenstein (Routledge, 2004).

Wolfgang Huemer is assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Erfurt, Germany. He is author of The Constitution of Consciousness. A Study on Analytic Phenomenology (Routledge, 2004).

Luca Pocci received his PhD in Comparative Literature and currently teaches in Siena. The scope of his research interests range from literary theory (with a particular focus on thematic criticism) to interdisciplinary fields, such as the interplay between the discourses of fiction and historiography.

Table of Contents

Introduction Part 1: Narrative as a Form of Knowing 1. Narration and Knowledge 2. The Ends of Narrative 3. Problems of Holocaust Fiction 4. The Truth about Stories is that that's All We Are 5. Narrative and the Fulfillment of Knowledge Part 2: Fiction & Cognition 6. Learning from Literature CognitiveFunctions of Fiction 7. Poetry and Cognition 8. Fiction, Simulation, and Knowledge 9. Nonsense, Logic, and Wishing 10. Knowledge Across Fictional Worlds and Real Worlds 11. Drawing Inferences from Literature Part 3: The Epistemology of Literary Appreciation 12. Myths and Legends 13. Interpretation, Emergence, and Insight 14. En Abyme:Internal Models and Cognitive Mapping 15. The Return of the Represses: Caring about Fiction and its Themes

Editorial Reviews

"...this volume makes an important contribution by focusing on several areas in which literary fiction and narrative remain of vital contemporary philosophical interest." — Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

From the Publisher