Moral-Reading, or Self-Containment with a Flaw

Abstract

A learned journal publishes a series of articles on how we look at morality and literature. Responses to the articles are requested. On inspection it appears that a single literary work is cited repeatedly in the articles, so that the whole issue of morals and reading morals in literature and in philosophy seems to turn about it, as it becomes the focal point of the entire issue. Henry James, not a philosopher, becomes the central focus, and The Golden Bowl is seen as a great container for the issue of morality and of reading and questioning the question of moral-reading. But The Golden Bowl is crystal, has a flaw, and will be shattered, even as it contains the story, not just its own but also ours here. This last story is critical.