The principle aim of this book is to explore the relationship between contemporary literary theory and analytic philosophy. The volume addresses this issue in two ways: first, through four exchanges between, on the one hand, proponents of avant-garde literary theory and, on the other, proponents of analytic philosophy (or of related literary critical positions); and second, through three cross-disciplinary essays on the relationship in question. Central topics in the volume include Self, Ethics, Interpretation, Language and characterisations of 'analytic' and 'continental' philosophy.

The principle aim of this work is to explore the relationship between contemporary literary theory and analytic philosophy. The volume addresses this issue in two ways: first, through four exchanges between, on the one hand, proponents of avant-garde literary theory and, on the other, proponents of analytic philosophy (or of related literary critical positions); and second, through three cross-disciplinary essays on the relationship in question. Central topics in the volume include self, ethics, interpretation, language and characterizations of "analytic" and "continental" philosophy. Recent decades have witnessed profound changes within some areas of Anglo-American literary studies. The most influential of these changes have been associated with the emergence of contemporary literary theory. Such theory comprises a range of approaches to literature (and other communicative forms) many of which derive from or are heavily indebted to continental philosophy. At the same time, there has been resistance to these changes, or counter proposals for change, from more traditional "humanist" literary critics and scholars and, to a lesser degree, from analytic philosophers. Debates about thes

Is it possible for postmodernism to offer viable, coherent accounts of ethics? Or are our social and intellectual worlds too fragmented for any broad consensus about the moral life? These issues have emerged as some of the most contentious in literary and philosophical studies. In Renegotiating Ethics in Literature, Philosophy, and Theory a distinguished international gathering of philosophers and literary scholars address the reconceptualisations involved in this 'turn towards ethics'. An important feature of this has been a renewed interest in the literary text as a focus for the exploration of ethical issues. Exponents of this trend include Charles Taylor, Bernard Williams, Iris Murdoch, Cora Diamond, Richard Rorty and Martha Nussbaum, the latter a contributor and a key figure in this volume. This book assesses the significance of this development for ethical and literary theory and attempts to articulate an alternative postmodern account of ethics which does not rely on earlier appeals to universal truths.

Re-thinking Theory offers a bold approach to literary studies, itself explicitly theoretical and yet making a searching critique of the modes, concepts and movements which comprise literary theory. Discussing key concepts such as ideology, signification and discourse, and analysing schools including that of F. R. Leavis, Althusserian Marxism, Derridean and Foucaultian poststructuralism, and New Historicism, the authors argue that there are major deficiencies in the conceptual foundations and the literary and political implications of much literary theory. These deficiencies are ascribed principally to three aspects of theoretical schools: the commitment to a non-referential view of language, the rejection of substantive accounts of the individual, and a repudiation of moral and aesthetic evaluation. The 'alternative account' offered by Professors Freadman and Miller incorporates the values renounced by this kind of literary theory and places a central emphasis on ethical discourse.

Many autobiographers share profound questions about human life with their readers--questions like: To what extent was my life imposed on me? To what extent did I bring it about through particular choices and actions, through the activity of my own will? Indeed, the issue of the will is central to autobiographical writing, and some of the greatest autobiographies give extended consideration to the will--its nature; its powers; its limitations; the forms of freedom, constraint, and expression it finds in various cultures; its role in particular human lives.
In this new study, unprecedented in subject and scope, Richard Freadman offers the first sustained account of how changing theological, philosophical, and psychological accounts of the human will have been reflected in the writing of autobiography, and of how autobiography in its turn has helped shape various understandings of the will. Early chapters trace narrative representations of the will from antiquity (the Greeks and Augustine) to postmodernism (Derrida and Barthes), with particular emphasis on late modernity's culture of the will. Later chapters then present detailed and powerfully original readings of autobiographical texts by Louis Althusser, Roland Barthes, B. F. Skinner, Ernest Hemingway, Simone de Beauvoir, Arthur Koestler, Stephen Spender, and Diana Trilling.
Freadman's interdisciplinary approach to autobiography and the will includes a theoretical defense of the view that autobiographers are, in varying degrees, agents in their own texts. "Threads of Life" argues that late modernity has inherited deeply conflicted attitudes to the will. Freadman suggests that these attitudes, now deeply embedded in contemporarycultural discourse, need reexamining. In this, he contends, 'reflective autobiography' has an important part to play.

Is it possible for postmodernism to offer coherent accounts of ethics in a fragmented social and intellectual world? In this collection, a distinguished international gathering of philosophers and literary scholars address the renewed interest in the literary text as a focus for ethical issues. Exponents of this trend include Charles Taylor, Bernard Williams, Iris Murdoch, Cora Diamond, Richard Rorty and Martha Nussbaum--a contributor and a key figure in this volume. This book assesses the significance of this development for ethical and literary theory.