FIRST VARIATION. PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE: A HYPOTHETICAL COMPARISON BETWEEN DIFFERENT APPROACHES

1 What is literature? One could naïvely answer: any kind of written work could be considered literature, just think about its Latin origin, “littera” (letter). Nonetheless nowadays we tend to adopt a more restrictive use of the term literature as referring to those written accounts somehow showing literary, aesthetic merit. According to this more restrictive use, we say that Crime and Punishment written by Fëdor Dostoevskij and In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust are good examples of lite..

Notes On Reading

Reading starts with the act of perception and rapidly moves into an area concerning the recognition of written words. Word recognition consists of two aspects (functioning simultaneously and working in parallel): the phonological—converting groups of letters into sounds—and the lexical— giving access to a mental dictionary of the meaning of words. But what does the act of reading consist of? According to Peter Kivy, there is a parallel between reading texts and reading scores. And what about the reasons for reading? When we read, we are not just interested in understanding what the signs stand for, but we also activate memory, perception, problem-solving, and reasoning, and our attention is also devoted to identifying those characteristics of texts which help categorize them as works of a specific genre. Readers play a central role: without them and their activity, there would be nothing but a page of black spots. As they read and understand, readers propositionally imagine what is written and, at a further level, they may also imagine objectually and simulatively. These objects come into being thanks to the words that we imagine are similar to what Roman Ingarden sees as a skeleton, needing the experience of reading to be appropriately concretized

Emma and the others

There are some others whom we will never have the chance to meet because they do not exist: Emma Bovary, Anna Karenina and Nana, for instance. The reason they are something different from us may seem obvious; they are, after all, fictional entities. But what does it mean when we say that they do not exist? That they are nothing at all, or that they are simply different from us? By assuming a realist ontological perspective we will explain what sort of things fictional literary entities are, comparing them both to existing and to non-existing entities that resemble them in some respects (what is the difference between the historical Napoleon and the Napoleon in War and Peace? Are there similarities between fictional entities as created entities and other artifacts?). Finally, we will determine which theory gives the best account of fictional entities as things other than ourselves

Quanta finzione c’è nella letteratura?

What does literature speak about? Is it possible to individuate semantic or textual characteristics able to make us understand when a work is fiction or not? What do we mean by saying that the fact of knowing that a work is fiction determines our judgment and our being involved with it? This essay aims at reflecting and working on these questions in order to understand what is the relation between our reality and the reality literature speaks about, what is the role of imagination in producing and appreciating fiction and what are the different literary genres.What does literature speak about? Is it possible to individuate semantic or textual characteristics able to make us understand when a work is fiction or not? What do we mean by saying that the fact of knowing that a work is fiction determines our judgment and our being involved with it? This essay aims at reflecting and working on these questions in order to understand what is the relation between our reality and the reality literature speaks about, what is the role of imagination in producing and appreciating fiction and what are the different literary genres