Literature from an aesthetic point of view

Abstract

In " Aesthetics and Literature: a Problematic Relation?", Peter Lamarque asks whether there can be an aesthetics of literature. His answer is yes, and is buttressed by four lines of argument. He faces up to the challenge that it is not obvious there either is or needs to be an aesthetics of literature. He insists that we should avoid "reductive accounts of either literature or aesthetics." He notes the need to clarify what we take literature to be in order to see how there could be an aesthetics of literature. Finally, he indicates that the vision of literary aesthetics he wishes to promote has much in common with "familiar principles of literary criticism." Lamarque is here building on his previous work in the philosophy of literature including the books Truth, Fiction, and Literature (co-authored with Stein Haugom Olsen)1 and Fictional Points of View,2 as well as on his entry on literature in The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics? "Aesthetics and Literature" can also usefully be read in relation to a recent paper co-authored with Olsen, "The Philosophy of Literature: Pleasure Restored,"4 since both these papers are concerned to establish what in the latter is described as "a framework for the enjoyment of literature."5 In his answer to the question, What is literature?, Lamarque opts not for a definition but rather for an institutional account articulated in terms of practices, conventions, and expectations. He argues that we will not be able to understand literature simply by looking, however closely, at putative literary works, and this is clearly the right strategy. We need in addition some sense of how literary works are to be approached for example, not as works of history or journalism. Rather, we must consider how literary works (as opposed to