Project MUSE®: Poetics Today - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/161
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Poetics Today.daily12026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 20, no. 3 (1999) - vol. 25 (2004)Latest Articles: Poetics TodayTWOProject MUSE®Poetics Today1527-55070333-5372Latest articles in Poetics Today. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Notes on Contributors
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/177235
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Derek Attridge is professor of English at the University of York and Distinguished Visiting Professor at Rutgers University. Among his books are Peculiar Language: Literature as Difference from the Renaissance to James Joyce (reissued in 2004), The Singularity of Literature (2004), and J. M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading: Literature in the Event (2004).Rey Chow is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities at Brown University. She is the author of five books in English, including Ethics after Idealism (1998) and The Protestant Ethnic and the Spirit of Capitalism (2002), and numerous essays on modern literature, film, and the politics of culture and representation. Her work has been widely anthologized and
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/161/image/coversmallNotes on Contributors2005-01-24text/htmlen-USNotes on Contributors2005-01-242005TWOProject MUSE®56282026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002005-01-24Ethical Modernism: Servants and Others in J. M. Coetzee's Early Fiction
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/177236
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Both Paul de Man and J. Hillis Miller have argued for an ethical dimension to reading (see, in particular, de Man 1979 and Miller 1987, 1990), and my thinking about this issue has no doubt been colored by their forceful arguments, but if there is an exemplary reader whose practice this essay is attempting to understand, it is Jacques Derrida. Derrida’s readings of literary works (some of which are collected in Derrida 1992) make no attempt to discern moral themes or to advance claims for ethical effectiveness; yet their practice is, in a profound sense, an ethical one.
I have argued this position most fully in The Singularity of Literature (2004); see also Attridge 1999, 2002. Among the issues there is no
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/161/image/coversmallEthical Modernism: Servants and Others in J. M. Coetzee's Early Fiction2005-01-24text/htmlen-USEthical Modernism: Servants and Others in J. M. Coetzee's Early Fiction2005-01-242005TWOProject MUSE®345612026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002005-01-24Towards an Ethics of Postvisuality: Some Thoughts on the Recent Work of Zhang Yimou
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/177237
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Harpham’s point, possibly influenced by the work of Emmanuel Levinas, is echoed and reformulated by the editors of the volume The Turn to Ethics in the following manner: “Ethics . . . is a process of formulation and self-questioning that continually rearticulates boundaries, norms, selves, and ‘others.’ From Aristotle and Kant to Nietzsche and Hegel to Habermas and Foucault to Derrida and Lacan and Levinas to many of the essayists collected here, the concept of ethics and the ethical has been reconceptualized, reformulated, and repositioned” (Garber et al. 2000b: viii).The best-known work in this line is the history of modern French philosophy and theory by Martin Jay (1993).For an extended discussion of the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/161/image/coversmallTowards an Ethics of Postvisuality: Some Thoughts on the Recent Work of Zhang Yimou2005-01-24text/htmlen-USTowards an Ethics of Postvisuality: Some Thoughts on the Recent Work of Zhang Yimou2005-01-242005TWOProject MUSE®191342026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002005-01-24One and the Same? Ethics, Aesthetics, and Truth
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/177238
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A full bibliography of this subfield would be too long: useful summaries of the debates to date can be found in Garber et al. 2000 and Davis and Womack 2001.
It is reprinted, with additional articles and responses, in their edited volume, The Philistine Controversy (2002). A response to this is The New Aestheticism (Joughin and Malpas 2003). It is reprinted, with additional articles and responses, in their edited volume
The Philistine Controversy
2002
A response to this is
The New Aestheticism
Joughin
and
Malpas
2003
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/161/image/coversmallOne and the Same? Ethics, Aesthetics, and Truth2005-01-24text/htmlen-USOne and the Same? Ethics, Aesthetics, and Truth2005-01-242005TWOProject MUSE®319632026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002005-01-24Introduction: The Double "Turn" to Ethics and Literature?
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/177239
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Of course, 1983 is a date of convenience—albeit a plausible one. Iris Murdoch, for instance, had been exploring the relationship between literature and moral philosophy long before it became one of the foci of contemporary thought. I use literature in a broad sense, including film, etc.
On the application of the notion of “turn” in the present context, see, for instance, Hoffman and Hornung 1996 (“moral turn”); Rorty 1999 [1989]: xvi (“turn . . . toward narrative”); Antonaccio 2000: 18 (“turn to literature”); Garber et al. 2000 (“turn to ethics”); Davis and Womack 2001 (“ethical turn”); Wyschogrod and McKenny 2003: 1–2 (“turn to the subject [of ethics]). For further treatment of the connection between
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/161/image/coversmallIntroduction: The Double "Turn" to Ethics and Literature?2005-01-24text/htmlen-USIntroduction: The Double "Turn" to Ethics and Literature?2005-01-242005TWOProject MUSE®599702026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002005-01-24On Literature and Ethics
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/177240
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I use literature throughout in its most general, inclusive sense to refer to the “body of texts from Homer to the present that have come to be called ‘literature’” (Attridge 1995: 111). For critical discussions of the rise of the specifically modern notion of “literature” as an aesthetic category and institution, see Todorov 1973; Derrida 1992: 33–75; Eagleton 1996: 15–16.Throughout this essay, I use—for the purpose of stylistic variation—ethics and moral philosophy as well as their adjectival cognates interchangeably. It should be contextually evident whether “ethical”/“moral” refers to philosophical argument or to pragmatic import. On a conceptual clarificatory note, I should stress that although ethics has been
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/161/image/coversmallOn Literature and Ethics2005-01-24text/htmlen-USOn Literature and Ethics2005-01-242005TWOProject MUSE®1156032026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002005-01-24Configuration and Government: Stefan George's The Star of the Covenant
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/177242
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The following introductory remarks draw on Kinzel 2000.Cf. Kolk 1998: 280; Norton 2002: 491.Hereafter, quotations from the English translation of George’s works will refer to Marx and Morwitz 1974 (with page numbers in parentheses). Unattributed translations are mine. References to the German original (in italics) follow George 1983 (with page and volume numbers in parentheses).It is significant that George was in contact with sociologists (like Simmel), and he and his circle elicited commentary from sociologists (like Max Weber). Cf. Weiller 1994; Breuer 1995: 169-83; Groppe 1997: chap. 12. I take the expression “shadow story” from Greenblatt 1990: 66.For both Simmel and Elias, detachment and engagement are
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/161/image/coversmallConfiguration and Government: Stefan George's The Star of the Covenant2005-01-24text/htmlen-USConfiguration and Government: Stefan George's The Star of the Covenant2005-01-242005TWOProject MUSE®373442026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002005-01-24"Faint with Secret Knowledge": Love and Vision in Murdoch's The Black Prince
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/177243
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As readers will see, this essay is a relative of my “Love and Vision: Iris Murdoch on Eros and the Individual” (1996). What is the same is the positioning of Murdoch between Plato and Dante and the argument that the novel lies closer to Plato. But this essay, unlike the earlier one, focuses on The Black Prince alone and offers a more detailed reading of it that differs in some respects from the briefer reading in the earlier essay, particularly in focusing on the novel’s form and on the many indications that Bradley is unreliable. The present essay’s concluding section, about the vision of the artist and Murdoch’s relation to Proust, is altogether new.All translations from Plato are my own.For my account of the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/161/image/coversmall"Faint with Secret Knowledge": Love and Vision in Murdoch's The Black Prince2005-01-24text/htmlen-US"Faint with Secret Knowledge": Love and Vision in Murdoch's The Black Prince2005-01-242005TWOProject MUSE®199302026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002005-01-24Rhetorical Literary Ethics and Lyric Narrative: Robert Frost's "Home Burial"
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/177244
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Early in his essay, Altieri (2001: 34–36) offers an intelligent, albeit partial, survey of the range of contemporary ethical criticism, one that identifies four modes: two of these are represented by Booth and Nussbaum and the others by deconstructive ethics and Levinasian ethics.In focusing on my approach to rhetorical ethics here, I do not mean to imply that Booth and Nussbaum could not themselves develop convincing responses to Altieri’s challenge. Indeed, because my approach has been influenced by their work, I would hope that each of them would find many points of agreement between this essay and any response to Altieri that they would be inclined to make themselves.There are, of course, multiple valuable
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/161/image/coversmallRhetorical Literary Ethics and Lyric Narrative: Robert Frost's "Home Burial"2005-01-24text/htmlen-USRhetorical Literary Ethics and Lyric Narrative: Robert Frost's "Home Burial"2005-01-242005TWOProject MUSE®341082026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002005-01-24Ethics as Style: Wittgenstein's Aesthetic Ethics and Ethical Aesthetics
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/177245
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See among others, Barrett 1984: 17; Ule and Varga von Kibéd 1998: 32; Altieri 2001: 33.All references to the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus adhere to Wittgenstein’s own numeration. The translations used are listed in the references.For a detailed study on Wittgenstein’s theory of aesthetics, see Stengel 2003. Although Wittgenstein’s biography cannot be used as an argument to bolster the validity of his philosophical theory, it still reveals, on a very pragmatic level, his struggle for an aesthetic-ethical life-form (see also Bouveresse 1994: 80). Starting off in aeronautics (1908), Wittgenstein explored his own capacity for happiness by trying his hand at such diverse professions as elementary school teacher
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/161/image/coversmallEthics as Style: Wittgenstein's Aesthetic Ethics and Ethical Aesthetics2005-01-24text/htmlen-USEthics as Style: Wittgenstein's Aesthetic Ethics and Ethical Aesthetics2005-01-242005TWOProject MUSE®400542026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002005-01-24Rilke's Imperatives
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/177246
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This count includes sixty-seven du or ihr imperatives and six third-person hortatory subjunctives (“er mische” and the like).It is helpful to distinguish between a text’s addressee (the one addressed as you in it) and its recipient (anyone who happens to find and read the text). A mythic character like Orpheus is the addressee, but not the recipient, of a sonnet that calls upon him.Leisi (1987: 74) suggests that the frequency of the dactylic meter in the sonnets bears formal testimony to the pervasive importance of Ovid’s Metamorphoses for the Sonnets to Orpheus.See Waters 2003 for a related discussion of the force of lyric address and our susceptibility as readers; the book is a broadly comparative study of poems
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-15T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/161/image/coversmallRilke's Imperatives2005-01-24text/htmlen-USRilke's Imperatives2005-01-242005TWOProject MUSE®395952026-05-15T00:00:00-05:002005-01-24