Description
Book SynopsisArgues for the relocation of ethics to the center of our engagement with literature. Returning ethics to its root sense, this work proposes that the ethical critic will be interested in any effect on the ethos, the total character or quality of tellers and listeners.
Table of ContentsPreface
PART I
RELOCATING ETHICAL CRITICISM
I
Introduction: Etbical Criticism, a Banned Discipline?
2
Why Ethical Criticism Fell on Hard Times
3
The Peculiar "Logic" of Evaluative Criticism
4
The Threat of Subjectivism and the Ethics of Craft
5
Who Is Responsible in Ethical Criticism, and for What?
PART II
THE MAKING OF FRIENDS AND COMMONWEALTHS: CRITICISM AS
ETHICAL CULTURE
Introduction: The Turn to Self-Culture
6
Implied Authors as Friends and Pretenders
7
Appraising Some Friends
8
Consequences for Character: The Faking and Making
of the "Self"
9
Appraising Character: Desire against Desire
IO
Figures That "Figure" the Mind: Images and Metaphors
as Constitutive Stories
II
Metaphoric Worlds: Myths, Their Creators and Critics
PART III
DOCTRINAL CRITICISM AND THE REDEMPTIONS OF CODUCTION
Introduction
12
Rabelais and the Challenge of Feminist Criticism
13
Doctrinal Questions in Jane Austen, D. H. Lawrence,
and Mark Twain
Epilogue: The Ethics of Reading
Appendix: An Anthology of Ethical Gifts, Thank-you
Notes, and Warnings
Bibliography of Ethical Criticism
Index of Subjects
Index of Names and Tides
