The Literary Absolute (P01497)

? Credit Points : 20 ? SCQF Level : 11 ? Acronym : LLC-P-P01497

This aims to extend students' knowledge of the growth of the idea of the literary aesthetic and its relations to philosophy, and in particular to questions of truth and value. After an introduction to eighteenth and nineteenth-century constructions of mimesis, imagination and the aesthetic as "literary absolute," the course turns to the implications of the epistemic and moral disengagement of the aesthetic in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The course then charts how through developing interest in notions of the unconscious, experience, expression, the sublime and power, the aesthetic is drawn into an attack upon the notion of truth. Finally, two weeks will be spent considering the location of the literary aesthetic within the context of a culture which has largely collapsed the meaning/truth distinction traditionally nurtured by philosophy, and which is disposed to view the aesthetic as a type of ideology rather than a value. Correspondingly, in the light of the review of the aesthetic's relation (both synchronic and diachronic) to truth, the central theoretical question will concern the possibility of the recovery of a sphere of autonomous literary value.

Entry Requirements

? This course is not available to visting students.

? Pre-requisites : None

? Co-requisites : None

? Costs : Essential course texts

Subject Areas

Home subject area

English Literature, (School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures, Schedule G)

Delivery Information

? Normal year taken : Postgraduate

? Delivery Period : Semester 1 (Blocks 1-2)

? Contact Teaching Time : 2 hour(s) per week for 11 weeks

? Other Required Attendance : 1 hour(s) per week for 11 weeks

Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes

This aims to extend students' knowledge of the growth of the idea of the literary aesthetic and its relations to philosophy, and in particular to questions of truth and value.