Literature, Rhetoric, Metaphysics: Literary Theory and Literary Aesthetics (New Accents) Book

What is literature, and what can literature be for criticism? James Kirwan's study stands back from the current debate on the "how" of criticism to ask if criticism can ever be an enterprise consistent with its subject - the literary text - or even with its own method. Through an examination of some of the perennial problems in literary theory, drawing upon the whole history of writing on literature from Plato to Derrida, Kirwan reveals the presence within the critical tradition of an ideal model of "literature" that at once creates and frustrates both the aims and methods of literary theory. Literature, Kirwan concludes, can never be more than a "beautiful lie". Consequently, criticism will only ever produce either an appeal to the transcendental, or a turning of literature into science or history, a process which deprives it of its identity.Read More