Overview

Wittgenstein is often regarded as the most important philosopher of the twentieth century, and in recent decades, his work has begun to play a prominent role in literary studies, particularly in debates over language, interpretation, and critical judgment. Wittgenstein and Literary Studies solidifies this critical movement, assembling recent critics and philosophers who understand Wittgenstein as a counterweight to longstanding tendencies in both literary studies and philosophical aesthetics. The essays here cover a wide range of topics. Why have contemporary writers been so drawn to Wittgenstein? What is a Wittgensteinian response to New Historicism, Post-Critique, and other major critical movements? How does Wittgenstein help us understand the nature of style, fiction, poetry, and the link between ethics and aesthetics? As the volume makes clear, Wittgenstein's work provides a rare bridge between professional philosophy and literary studies, offering us a way out of entrenched positions and their denials-what Wittgenstein himself called 'pictures' 'that held us captive.'

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9781108833219

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'For anyone interested in Wittgenstein's value to the study of literature, this volume should be essential reading.' Michael Fischer, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

Author Information

Robert Chodat is Professor of English at Boston University. He is the author of The Matter of High Words: Naturalism, Normativity, and the Postwar Sage (2017) and Worldly Acts and Sentient Things: The Persistence of Agency from Stein to DeLillo (2008). John Gibson is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Louisville. He is the author of Fiction and the Weave of Life (2008), editor of The Philosophy of Poetry (2015), and co-editor of The Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Literature (2015), Narrative, Emotion, and Insight (2011), and The Literary Wittgenstein (2004).

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