{"product_id":"what-is-fiction-for-9780253014085","title":"What Is Fiction For","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHow can literature, which consists of nothing more than the description of imaginary events and situations, offer any insight into the workings of \"human reality\" or \"the human condition\"? Can mere words illuminate something that we call \"reality\"? This book answers these questions.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhat Is Fiction For? Literary Humanism Restored brings the disciplines of literature and philosophy to bear on a single subject: the necessity of humane letters in education, the capacity of literature to transform and elevate the mind.\u003c\/p\u003e * Academic Questions *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe book is wide ranging and deeply engaged with a broad range of theoretical perspectives. . . . Recommended.\u003c\/p\u003e * Choice *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis book is not an easy read, but the effort is rewarding since its argument may very well represent a cornerstone in the history of ideas. It can certainly be a cornerstone of one's career: if one is a student in the humanities and has not yet developed needed certainties, this book can provide the grounding needed to develop them. The book's ideas are stoically, logically, and brilliantly defended. . . . Harrison's account ultimately defines itself as mandatory reading for anyone concerned with literature and literary humanism.\u003c\/p\u003e * Partial Answers *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eOne great virtue of the book is that Harrison's marriage of philosophy and literary criticism does genuine and novel work. It takes someone of Harrison's philosophical training to articulate the theoretical basis for his defense of literary humanism, and it takes his gifts as a critic to show what this humanism looks like in practice.\u003c\/p\u003e * Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eAll those who care about literature, including admirers of the New Criticism, are indebted to Bernard Harrison for demonstrating, at length and in painstaking theoretical detail, the philosophical validity for the twenty-first century of 'merely what every common reader has always taken to be involved in ''talking about books.'''\u003c\/p\u003e * The Weekly Standard *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn What Is Fiction For? Harrison makes a strong case for the ongoing relevance of the study of iterature as a serious and worthwhile intellectual pursuit.\u003c\/p\u003e * Eighteenth-Century Fiction *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e[A] hugely original and rich defence of literary humanism. . . . I think this book, and Harrison's library cognitivism more broadly, deserves more attention . . . . \u003c\/p\u003e * British Journal of Aesthetics *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003ePreface\u003cbr\u003eIntroduction\u003cbr\u003ePART I: Getting Real\u003cbr\u003e1. Humanism and its Discontents\u003cbr\u003e2. The Mirror of Nature\u003cbr\u003e3. Truth, Meaning and Reality\u003cbr\u003e4. Leavis and Wittgenstein (I): A Living Language\u003cbr\u003e5. Leavis and Wittgenstein (II): The \"Third Realm\"\u003cbr\u003ePART II: Character, Language and Human Worlds\u003cbr\u003e6. Nature and Artifice\u003cbr\u003e7. Virginia Woolf and \"The True Reality\"\u003cbr\u003e8. Aharon Appelfeld and the Problem of Holocaust Fiction\u003cbr\u003e9. The Limits of Authorial License in Our Mutual Friend\u003cbr\u003ePART III: Against \"The Meaning of the Work\"\u003cbr\u003e10. Reactive versus Interpretive Criticism\u003cbr\u003e11. Houyhnhnm Virtue\u003cbr\u003e12. Sterne and Sentimentalism\u003cbr\u003ePART IV: The Skeptic Side\u003cbr\u003e13. Reanimating the Author\u003cbr\u003e14. Persons and Narratives\u003cbr\u003e15. Reading and Reading-In\u003cbr\u003e16. Meaning It Literally: Derrida and his Critics Revisited\u003cbr\u003eEpilogue: Telling the Great from the Good\u003cbr\u003eNotes\u003cbr\u003eBibliography\u003cbr\u003eIndex\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Indiana University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49400542921047,"sku":"9780253014085","price":25.19,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9780253014085.jpg?v=1730470938","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/what-is-fiction-for-9780253014085","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}