Literary Theory - General & Miscellaneous, Miscellaneous Genres & Literary Forms - Literary Criticism

Ethics, Theory and the Novel

Name: Ethics, Theory and the Novel
Author: David Parker
ISBN: 9780521070317

by David Parker

Available on Bookshop Write a review

Books.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.

Overview

The virtual suppression of explicit ethical and evaluative discourse by current literary theory can be seen as the momentary triumph of a sceptical post-Enlightenment reflective tradition over others vital to a full account of human and literary worth. In Ethics, theory and the novel, David Parker brings together recent developments in moral philosophy and literary theory. He questions many currently influential movements in literary criticism, showing that their silences about ethics are as damaging as the political silences of Leavisism and New Criticism in the 1950s and 1960s. He goes on to examine Middlemarch, Anna Karenina, and three novels by D.H. Lawrence, and explores the consequences for major literary works of the suppression of either the Judeo-Christian or the Romantic-expressivist ethical traditions. Where any one tradition becomes a master-narrative, he argues, imaginative literature ceases to have the deepest interest and relevance for us. Overall, this book is an essay in a new evaluative discourse, the implications of which go far beyond the particular works it analyses.

Synopsis

The virtual suppression of ethical and evaluative discourse by current literary theory can be seen as the triumph of one post-Enlightenment tradition over others vital to a full account of humanity and literary value. In Ethics, Theory and the Novel David Parker shows that current silences about ethics are as damaging as the earlier political silences of Leavisism and New Criticism. He goes on to examine Middlemarch, Anna Karenina, and novels by D.H. Lawrence, exploring the consequences for major literary works of the suppression of ethical traditions.