PLEASE NOTE this is a sample reading list for the 2014-15 academic year
– precise seminar content may change from year to year.
Week 1: Introduction: historical roots, overview of problems and goals
(Plato, Republic X and Aristotle, Poetics, are important sources here, if you haven’t already read
them, please do.)
Week 2: Scientific and philosophical method
Reading:
J. Stolnitz, ‘On the Cognitive Triviality of Art’, British Journal of Aesthetics 32 (1992)
P. Lamarque, ‘Cognitive Values in the Arts: Marking the Boundaries’, in Contemporary Debates in
Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art, ed. M. Kieran (Blackwell, 2006)
O. O’Neill, ‘The Power of Example’, Philosophy 61 (1986)
C. Wilson, ‘Literature and Knowledge’, Philosophy 58 (1983)
Further reading:
D. Davies, Ch. 8 of Aesthetics and Literature (Continuum, 2007)
E. John, ‘Literary Fiction and the Philosophical Value of Detail’, in Imagination, Philosophy and the
Arts, eds. M. Kieran and D. Lopes
Peter Lamarque and Stein Haugom Olsen, Truth, Fiction, and Literature (Clarendon Press, 1994)
I. A. Richards, ‘Poetry and Beliefs’, in Problems in Aesthetics, ed. Morris Weitz (Macmillan, 1970)
Week 3: Literature and moral learning
Reading:
M. Nussbaum, 'The Literary Imagination in Public Life', New Literary History 22(4), 1991; excerpts
from Love's Knowledge
C. Diamond, ‘Martha Nussbaum and the Need for Novels’, Philosophical Investigations 16 (1993)
Further reading:
Symposium on Nussbaum in New Literary History 15 (1983)
M. Weston, Ch. 6 on Nussbaum, Philosophy, Literature and the Human Good
T. Zamir, Double Vision (Princeton UP, 2007)—see introductory chapters
Week 4: Literature and moral philosophy
C. Diamond, ‘The Difficulty of Reality and the Difficulty of Philosophy’, in Reading Cavell, eds. A.
Crary and S. Shieh (Routledge, 2006)
A. Leist, ‘Against Society, Against History, Against Reason’, in J. M. Coetzee and Ethics, eds. A. Leist
and P. Singer (Columbia UP, 2010)
Further reading:
J. M. Coetzee, The Lives of Animals or Elizabeth Costello
C. Diamond, ‘Missing the Adventure’, in The Realistic Spirit (MIT Press, 1995)
S. Mulhall, The Wounded Animal (Princeton UP, 2009)
Week 5: Narrative, life and understanding
Reading:
P. Ricoeur, ‘Life in Quest of Narrative’, in On Paul Ricoeur: Narrative and Interpretation, ed. David
Wood
P. Lamarque, ‘Opacity, Fiction and Narratives of the Self’, Ch. 1 of The Opacity of Narrative
J. Gibson, ‘Thick Narratives’, in Narrative, Emotion, and Insight, eds. N. Carroll and J. Gibson
Week 6: Truth, irony and self-creation
Reading:
R. Rorty, Chs. 2, 4 and 8, in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge UP, 1989)
Further reading:
M. Weston, Ch. 7 on Rorty, in Philosophy, Literature and the Human Good
J. Landy, How to Do Things with Fictions (Oxford UP, 2012), Introduction
Week 7: Form, thought and value
Reading:
G. Stein, excerpts from Tender Buttons
W. Gass, ‘Gertrude Stein and the Geography of the Sentence’, in World within the Word (1978)
A. Gibson, Ch. 2, Postmodernity, Ethics and the Novel (Routledge, 1999)—see also Introduction
Week 8: Metaphor, meaning and truth
Reading:
M. Black, ‘Metaphor’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society LV, 1954-5
D. Davidson, ‘What Metaphors Mean’, Critical Inquiry 5 (1978)
Week 9: Poetry, language and experience
Reading:
T. Cohen, ‘Metaphor and the Cultivation of Intimacy’, Critical Inquiry 5 (1978)
T. Jollimore, '"Like a Picture or a Bump on the Head": Vision, Cognition, and the Language of Poetry',
Midwest Studies in Philosophy 33, 2009
Further reading:
K. Harries, 'Metaphor and Transcendence', Critical Inquiry 5(1), 1978
Hills, David. 2007. ‘Problems of Paraphrase: Bottom’s Dream’, Baltic International Yearbook 3
http://thebalticyearbook.org/journals/baltic/article/view/22/21
Week 10: Philosophers reading poetry
Reading:
D. O’Connor, ‘Platonic Selves in Shelley and Stevens’, in Plato’s Symposium: Issues in Interpretation
and Reception, eds. Lesher, Nails and Sheffield
S. Gardner, ‘Wallace Stevens and Metaphysics: The Plain Sense of Things’, European Journal of
Philosophy 2.
Further reading:
E. John, ‘Poetry and Directions for Thought’, Philosophy and Literature 37(2), 2013
J. Koethe, ‘Thought and Poetry’, Midwest Studies in Philosophy 25, 2001, and ‘Poetry and the
Experience of Experience’, in Poetry at One Remove (University of Michigan Press, 2000)
P. Lamarque, ‘Poetry and Abstract Thought’, Midwest Studies in Philosophy 33, 2009