Literature and the New Interdisciplinarity

Poetics, Linguistics, History
Erscheinungsjahr 1994
ISBN: 978-90-5183-597-7
Verlag: Brill | Rodopi

Buch, Englisch, Band 14, 245 Seiten, Format (B × H): 16 mm x 23 mm

Reihe: DQR Studies in Literature

In recent years there has been an increasing realization that language and literature are, so to speak, socioculturally consubstantial. Accordingly literary scholars and linguists now often define their interests in sociohistorical terms, and the 'lang.-lit.' divide is giving way to shared concerns which are interdisciplinary between the three poles: poetics, linguistics, society. To illustrate and consolidate this new interdisciplinarity, the editors of this volume have collected a number of articles specially written by an international team of scholars, including figures of the highest international distinction. Key interdisciplinary terms such as contextualization, addressivity, and convention are subjected to critical scrutiny and applied to particular texts. Some of the most widely canvassed theories of communication and literature, particularly Sperber and Wilson's relevance theory and Bakhtin's sociolinguistic poetics, are carefully assessed and extended to new areas. And there are contextualizing approaches to phenomena such as genre, historical genre modulation, irony, metaphor, Modernist impersonality, unreliable narration, informal style, and literary gossip.
The book's argument is carefully structured. An extensive introduction outlines the general background of ideas and the thirteen articles are grouped into four main sections, linked together by a clear line of questioning and discussion which is made explicit in sectional introductions.
The book is addressed to established scholars, postgraduate students, and advanced undergraduates who are interested in linguistics, literary theory, literary criticism, and sociocultural history and searching for ways of bringing these branches of learning into synergetic relation with each other.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Weitere Mitwirkende

Sell, Roger D.

Verdonk, Peter

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Roger D. SELL: Introduction: The new interdisciplinarity. SECTION I Literature as 'special' and 'ordinary'. Henry WIDDOWSON: Old song that will not declare itself: on poetry and the imprecision of meaning. Nils Erik ENKVIST: Context. SECTION II How readers of literature work towards meanings. Peter STOCKWELL: To be or not to be a phagocyte: procedures of reading metaphors. Michael TOOLAN: On recyclings and irony. Adrian PILKINGTON: Against literary reading conventions. Tony BEX: The relevance of genre. SECTION III Writers and readers within sociocultural history. Alison TATE: Bakhtin, addressivity, and the poetics of objectivity. Guy COOK: Contradictory voices: a dialogue between Russian and Western European linguists. Irma TAAVITSAINEN: Characters and English almanac literature: genre developments and intertextuality. Ingrid TIEKEN-BOON VAN OSTADE: Eighteenth-century letters and journals as evidence: studying society through the individual. SECTION IV Literature in the lives of readers. Ineke BOCKTING: Light in August and the issue of unreliability. Willie van PEER: Emotional functions of reading literature. Roger D. SELL: Literary gossip, literary theory, literary pragmatics.