Literature as Communication: The Foundations of Mediating CriticismThis book offers foundations for a literary criticism which seeks to mediate between writers and readers belonging to different historical periods or social groupings. This makes it, among other things, a timely intervention in the postmodern "culture wars," though the theory put forward will be of interest not only to students of literature and culture, but also to linguists. Sell describes communication in general as strongly interactive, as very much affected by the disparate situationalities of "sending" and "receiving," yet as by no means completely determined by them. Seen this way, men and women are both social beings and individuals, capable of empathizing with sociohistorical formations which are alien to them, sometimes even to the extent of changing their own life-world. By treating literary activity as communicational in this same dynamic sense, Sell radically modifies the main paradigms of twentieth-century literary theory, casting much new light on questions of genre, interpretation, affect and ethics. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
12 Main features of the theory proposed | 2 |
13 Interdisciplinarity | 4 |
the centrifugal and the centripetal | 8 |
15 Positive mediation | 12 |
16 Mediation and the discussion of literature | 19 |
17 Wanted an appropriate literary pragmatics | 21 |
AHistorical DeHumanization | 29 |
42 Social individuals and their coadaptations | 145 |
43 The protean self and communicative personae | 158 |
Interactive Consequences | 177 |
52 Generic coadaptations through time | 178 |
53 Reliving biography and influence | 193 |
54 Changes in politeness | 207 |
55 Bidimensional beauties from history | 230 |
Mediating Criticism | 253 |
22 Structuralist linguistics | 40 |
23 Alliances of literary formalism and linguistic thought | 43 |
24 Speech act theory of literature | 48 |
25 Formalist literary pragmatics | 64 |
26 Some pros and cons | 74 |
The Historically Human | 77 |
33 Latetwentiethcentury linguistics | 80 |
34 The written deed | 83 |
35 From cultural structuralism and poststructuralism to postmodern stalemate | 88 |
36 A historical yet nonhistoricist literary pragmatics | 107 |
Literature as Communication | 119 |
62 Trajectories of mediation | 257 |
63 Inside and outside | 258 |
64 What medium for mediation? | 265 |
65 Dealing with conflict | 266 |
66 A future for literature? | 271 |
67 Scholarship and culture in symbiosis | 277 |
Glossary | 281 |
Bibliography | 303 |
333 | |
341 | |
Other editions - View all
Literature as Communication: The foundations of mediating criticism Roger D. Sell Limited preview - 2000 |
Literature as Communication: The Foundations of Mediating Criticism Roger D. Sell Limited preview - 2000 |
Literature as Communication: The Foundations of Mediating Criticism Roger D. Sell No preview available - 2000 |
Common terms and phrases
actually aesthetic analysis approaches Barthes Barthesian behaviour Cambridge century co-adaptation communication context of reading context of writing cultural deixis dialogue Dickens discourse discussion Essays ethical F.R. Leavis fictional formalist Gadamer genres hermeneutics historical yet non-historicist historicist human I.A. Richards idea illocutionary acts illocutionary force imaginative implicature implied reader instance interaction interdisciplinarities interpersonal interpretation intertextuality involved judgement kind language least Leavis less literary criticism literary formalism literary texts Literary Theory literature's London matter means mediating criticism mind Modernist moral narrative narratology oral Oxford particular perhaps poem Poetics poetry politeness positive mediation postmodern poststructuralist Raymond Tallis relationship relevance response Richard scholarship semiosis semiotic sender sense Shakespeare situationality social individual society sometimes speak speech act theory structuralist structuralist linguistics structure suggest T.S. Eliot text's textual things tion tradition truth understanding unitary context assumption University Press words writer and reader