Between Theory and Practice: Literary Theory and Analytic Aesthetics

Abstract

The article aims to determine the relation between literary theory and the analytic philosophy of literature. The former is understood mostly as a body of ideologically and culturally focused normative reading strategies, and the latter as an inquiry into the foundations, assumptions and aims of reading and appreciating works of literature. Although at fi rst it might seem that both approaches seem radically incompatible, a closer inspection reveals that, in some cases, they are complementary, while, in others, the relation is more hierarchical, with aesthetic judgments being logically primary to theory-driven research. At the same time, literary theory is always partly a philosophy of literature, as no theoretical inquiry is free from basic aesthetic considerations on the nature of meaning, authorship, or value judgments. In the end, radically anti-theoretical stances of neopragmatists, literary darwinists, or some analytic aestheticians are misguided to the extent that what impedes or suppresses certain types of research in the humanities is literary theory’s institutionally dominant position, rather than its claims, or the type of research it encourages.