In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Aesthetics and Literature
  • Jonathan Steinwand (bio)
Aesthetics and Literature. By David Davies. New York: Continuum, 2007. viii + 212 pp. Cloth $132, paper $26.95.

Readers of literature usually take for granted a number of foundational questions that seem simple at first but that philosophers of literature have found difficult to answer: What qualities and conditions distinguish a text as a literary work? Do fictional characters exist? If not, why do we care about them, get so interested in them, and talk about them? Yet, if we say they do exist, then we have to consider further: in what way do they exist? What sort of truth does fiction contain? Why do we choose to read fictional works that produce in us feelings that we prefer to avoid in real life? Can there be more than one “right” interpretation of a literary work? Is literature good or bad for us? Do we acquire knowledge that is useful in the real world from our involvement in fictional worlds?

David Davies’s Aesthetics and Literature presents an intriguing introduction to Anglo-American analytical philosophy of literature. Davies traces debates in the field about the ontological status of fictional worlds and fictional beings—that is, in what sense are fictional beings and their worlds real? He also gets into the epistemological questions of how we find and verify the truth and meaning of literature and literary interpretation. Finally, he looks into how we can be moved emotionally by literature and what moral [End Page 539] value literary works provide. Davies’s contribution is particularly successful where he draws analogies to the philosophy of the visual arts and dance and his work on Art as Performance (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2004). He also weaves into his discussions vivid presentations of examples of borderline cases that enrich and enliven the debates through the particularities of specific texts. Although readers are likely to disagree at certain points, they will admire Davies’s careful work of analyzing the arguments. From the title, one expects more discussion and historical context for the study of aesthetics, but as an advanced introduction to the philosophy of literature, the book accomplishes its intention.

In chapters on the nature of literature and the nature of fiction, Davies explores arguments for how literary works are to be distinguished from other written works and works of art. The conclusion he draws—that the context of the production and appearance of the work helps determine its nature—is less interesting than the process of reasoning that Davies follows. For Davies, the philosophy of literature is about engaging the most compelling arguments made and then following through the responses by opponents who attempt to offer correctives or temper some of the imperfections of a particular theory. For example, in deciding whether the text per se or the text in relation to its context of production and distribution constitutes a literary work, Davies summarizes philosophers who support various forms of textualism (Richard Wollheim, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Nelson Goodman, and Catherine Elgin) and then offers the contextualist critique of textualism provided by Gregory Currie, which Davies also favors (in fact, Davies frequently directs favorable attention to Currie’s contributions to the field [25–27, 41–48, 64–69, 118–19, 128–30]). What is valuable about Davies’s work is his clear articulation of each of the issues debated in the philosophy of literature and the way he works through each of the most notable positions in the scholarship. Highlights include discussions of “possible worlds” theory (58–64), “fidelity constraints” in fiction and non-fiction (43–48), the distinction made between the “fictional author” and the real author (65–68), and the paradoxes involved when we get so involved in the lives of fictional characters (121–32) and where we take some kind of pleasure in tragic and horrible events (132–41).

Literary scholars will be surprised how strongly Davies argues that the intentions of the author are crucial to consider in determining whether a text is a literary work (26–31), whether the work is a work of fiction (37), and even in considering the meaning of the work (95–97). In chapter five, Davies reviews the...

pdf