Category: 20.1 Engagement

Abstract How does commitment work in a novel whose narrator upholds political views and ethical standards that are unacceptable to the common reader? In Jonathan Littel’s Les Bienveillantes the former SS officer who tells the story of his participation in the Final Solution is unable to preserve the coherence of his own point of view.… Continue reading Luc Rasson | Engagement als (zelf)onthulling: over Jonathan Littels Les Bienveillantes

Abstract Het engagement is terug in de literatuur. Daarmee is het slechts enkele decennia afwezig geweest in de dominante theorieën over literatuur en vele literaire werken die in deze periode als belangrijk zijn bestempeld. Ook Hans van Stralen, literatuurwetenschapper in Utrecht en Amsterdam, herkent deze terugkeer wanneer hij zegt dat: “[a] greater interest in ethics… Continue reading Anouk van der Pluijm | Hedendaags Engagement. Grote Ideeën in het Klein

Abstract It is a well known fact that Michel Foucault around 1970, quite instantly, lost all interest in modern literature. Although his work from 1976 on shows a regain of his fascination for literary text, his attention had shifted towards texts from antiquity and the early middle ages. In theatre plays by Euripides, rhetoric lectures… Continue reading Marrigje Paijmans | De zelfkant van de ander

Abstract What if censorship begins before we even start speaking? In “Ruled Out: Vocabularies of the Censor”, Judith Butler provides sufficient evidence of this oft-overlooked possibility, assigning this form of pre-censorship with a recycled term: foreclosure. While many other scholars limit their focus to how censorship is enacted after a text is produced, Butler uses… Continue reading Emily Miles | Redrawing the Lines Foreclosure: The Possibilities Presented by a Bakhtinian Outlook on the Novel

Abstract In this article Haskins addresses what he calls the autonomy problem in aesthetic theory. The controversy here is, firstly, whether a work of art derives its value from its being art as such or from its instrumental (for example moral) efficacy and, secondly, whether the causes for its existence are autonomistic or heteronomistic. Haskins… Continue reading Casey Haskins | Literature, Autonomy, and the Complexity of Aesthetics

Abstract Having heard all too often the importance of literary education for developing various cognitive skills in relation to cultural contexts, the author proposes the possibility of resurrecting the concept of appreciation as a focus for talking about the values education can pursue through the arts. Appreciation is the study of performances – in life… Continue reading Charles Altieri | Why “Appreciation” Ought be Revived as a Model for the Study of the Arts