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Unorthodox Views Reflections on Reality, Truth, and Meaning in Current Social, Cultural, and Critical Discourse
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James L. Battersby
Book Code: GM2166
ISBN: 0-313-32166-3
ISBN-13: 978-0-313-32166-5
256 pages, N/A
Greenwood Press
Publication: 3/30/2002
List Price: $102.95 (UK Sterling Price: £59.95)
Availability: Out of stock
Media Type: Hardcover
Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Subjects:
Series Title: Contributions to the Study of World Literature
Series Number: 111
Description: Much of contemporary critical theory holds that meaning is relative and subjective. This book scrutinizes the principal assumptions and beliefs about mind, language, meaning, truth, and reality governing current debate and discussion not only in literary criticism and theory but also in the broader academic culture. In doing so, the volume brings support to the growing number of scholars who are expressing renewed interest in authors, determinate meanings, formal and aesthetic issues, and related concerns, but who have been laboring without sufficient theoretical arguments or justifications. Moving beyond critique, the book offers rigorous defenses of alternatives to the prevailing critical orthodoxies. The first five chapters address foundational issues, arguing against or exposing the limitations of the most common forms of linguistic idealism, social constructivism, and relativism. These initial chapters prepare the way for subsequent discussions of more text-based matters, such as the authorial determination of artistic effects, the bases of our emotional and evaluative responses to fiction, the justifications of our decisions about intrinsic merit and artistic value, and other matters crucial to our understanding of the meanings and values implicit in human expression.
Table of Contents:
  • Preface
  • Introduction: Heresy in an Orthodox World: The Affirmation of Truth, Reality, and Meaning
  • Language, Truth, and Reality
  • The Truth Is, There Is No Truth
  • Realism and Truth, Together Again
  • Conceptual Relativity and Relativism
  • Determinate Meanings and Coherent Messages
  • Paying Deference to Reference
  • Fact, Fiction, and Method
  • Fact, Fiction, Belief, and Emotion
  • Incommensurability, Rational Method, and "Anything Goes"
  • Interpretation, Politics, and Intrinsic Merit
  • Agents, Makings, and Meanings
  • Human Universals, Politics, and Literary Value
  • Humanism and Intercultural Critique
  • Bibliography
  • Index
LC Card Number: 2001050138
LCC Class: PN94
Dewey Class: 801
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