British fiction 1930-1945

Review of all publications and scholarly outputs (including conferences and colloquia) pertaining to British fiction from the period of 1930-1945, in the 2015-16 review period. The Year's Work is the review of record for scholarly publication in English Studies

Responsible individualism and mauvaise foi in middlemarch and freedom

No abstract available

Paul Ricoeur and the theoretical imagination

This study seeks to account for and contest Ricoeur's relative absence from the literary-theoretical canon in Britain. Whilst Ricoeur secured a highly influential position within American language philosophy in his lifetime, the literary consequences of his philosophy have been largely overlooked by literary-theoretical discourse itself. This is in spite of Ricoeur's role within the revolution of French thought from whence the New Critical dominion was finally overturned in this country. I contend that the heightened socio-political exigencies of the theoretical revolution, whilst they facilitated a desirable renewal of thought, also fostered unhelpful polarities between the subject and the text, between an idealist metaphysics and a sceptical Theory and a submerged prejudice against philosophies which, like hermeneutics, maintained a positive dialogue with the Kantian tradition. Forged in the interchange of German romanticism and German historicism, modem hermeneutics developed as a response to the excesses of both, seeking to place limits on the claims of a self-authored genius and linguistic determinism alike. As a contemporary of phenomenology and structuralism, Ricoeur provides a similar negotiation of his immediate context, putting paid to the heightened polemic of the literary textualists and the literary relativists alike. Central to this achievement is Ricoeur's concept of "semantic innovation" it stands at the heart of his theory of metaphor and forms the basis for his semantic re-appropriation of the productive imagination. Through a combination of historical and philosophical analysis, this thesis seeks to demonstrate Ricoeur's highly rigorous achievements as an astute theoretician and as one wholeheartedly committed to the liberating powers of the literary imagination

Paul Ricoeur and the limits of critique

This essay brings the post-critique arguments of Eve Kosoksky Sedgwick and Bruno Latour into dialogue with Ricoeur's distinctive hermeneutical reading of Kant. My contention here is that critique, read through Ricoeur's Kantian-ontological lens, should not be viewed as a scourge on contemporary thinking, but as a helpful and philosophically German resource with which to counter the challenges of post-truth culture

Critique and Complexity: Some Challenges to Contemporary Literary Theory

Discussion of recent materialist and realist trends in Continental philosophy and of their ramifications for literary theory / English studies

Habit

No abstract available

The role of chance in Paul Ricoeur's 'Time and Narrative'

In this chapter on 'Time and Narrative' I consider the role of chance and the aleatory within Ricoeur's narrative architectonics. Contrary to the structured and apparently programmatic aspects of Ricoeur's position within this three-volume work, I elaborate an aleatory reading of his position, emphasising the previously unacknowledged role of chance and the 'uniquely unique' within his narrative philosophy. This pivots upon a re-reading of Ricoeur's interpretation of Aristotle, alongside biographical details from Ricoeur's war time experiences. I argue for the importance of the aleatory to Ricoeur's narrative philosophy concluding that Ricoeur's ethics are a response to uncertainty

Habit

No abstract available

Realisms

No abstract available