Aesthetics and Literature Book

Preface     vii
The nature of literature     1
What is a literary work?     17
The ontological issue     17
Textualism     19
Contextualism critiques of textualism     23
The nature of fiction     32
Stylistic and semantic conceptions of fiction     33
Functional theories of fiction     36
True fictions     43
Reading fiction (1): Truth in a story     49
Constraints on a theory of truth in fiction     50
'Possible worlds' analyses of truth in fiction     58
Fictional truth and fictional authors     64
Reading fiction (2): Interpreting literary works     70
Interpretation and the 'intentional fallacy'     70
'Actual intentionalist' theories of interpretation     76
'Uptake' theories of interpretation     84
Interpretative pluralism and interpretative monism     92
The nature of fictional characters     98
Philosophical problems with fictional characters     98
'Meinongian' solutions     101
'Russellian' solutions     106
Alternative strategies     113
Literature and the emotions     120
The 'paradox offiction'     121
The 'paradox of tragedy' and the 'paradox of horror'     132
The cognitive value of literature     142
Literary cognitivism     142
The epistemological challenge to literary cognitivism     147
Fictional narratives and thought experiments     157
Literature, morality, and society     164
The moral value of literature     165
Ethical value and artistic value     170
The accountability of literature     182
Notes     189
Bibliography     200
Index     207