Peter Lamarque

This chapter explores a general puzzle about lyric poetry, especially, though not exclusively, the modern short lyric. The often extraordinary linguistic compression of much lyric poetry makes these poems, to say the least, resistant to understanding. Why do we value art that pushes language to such extremes? The chapter's response to this builds on the idea that in poetry we are concerned not quite with content but with a ‘subject-realized-in-just-this-way’, and this reveals the extent to which expression is the chief object of poetic appreciation and critical scrutiny. Understanding this aright sheds light on long-standing debates concerning the so-called heresy of paraphrase, the supposed identity of poetic form and content, and the idea that poetry bears a uniquely poetic brand of meaning.

The starting point is the recognition that works of literature are works of art and to appreciate them as such is to appreciate their aesthetic (and, closely related, their ‘literary’) achievement. The chapter takes another look at the reading practices that are integral to literature so understood, giving particular attention to the kinds of psychological states involved. It argues that it is useful to think of normative responses to literary works (when read ‘from a literary point of view’) as kinds of ‘experience’, understood as encompassing a certain focus of attention (on ‘literary qualities’) and a certain kind of appreciation (the pleasures attached to ‘literary values’ when identified). It is not an empirical enquiry, drawing on studies of actual readers reacting to texts, but a normative enquiry, examining, as it were, the ‘rules of the game’ that constitute a familiar and ancient practice.

This chapter presents a critical discussion of Peter Goldie’s conception of narrative thinking as developed in his book _The Mess Inside_. While many aspects of Goldie’s moderate position are applauded, questions are raised as to the indispensability, even centrality, of narrative in the cases he explores, notably reflections on the past through memories and anticipations of the future through imaginings. It is argued that Goldie places too much emphasis on literary-seeming devices like irony and free indirect style in the narratives of memory and imagination. Scepticism is also raised about the role in general of narrative in human self-conception, even in Goldie’s moderate version in terms of a ‘narrative sense of self’. While Goldie recognizes the dangers of ‘fictionalizing tendencies’ in his emphasis on narrative, he does not entirely see these off in his own account.

The paper offers some critical comments on Eliza Ives’s essay ‘Sounding Sense and Sensing Sound: “Form-Content Unity” Revisited and Reformulated’. It is suggested that Ives’s intriguing formula ‘sounding sense and sensing sound’ is too narrow a focus for a satisfactory ‘reformulation’ of A. C. Bradley’s account of form-content unity in his lecture ‘Poetry for Poetry’s Sake’. A broader conception of poetic form is proposed, including, but going beyond, an emphasis on sound. Also discussed is Bradley’s notion of ‘poetic experience’, rightly endorsed by Ives but in need of further elaboration. Finally, some remarks, with added clarification, are offered in response to Ives’s criticisms of my own position on this topic.

The paper examines the relation between interpretation and the objects of interpretation, principally, but not exclusively, in the realm of art. Several theses are defended: that interpretation cannot proceed without prior determination of the kind of thing being interpreted; that the mode of interpretation is determined by the nature of its object; that interpretation, of a meaning‐determining rather than generic kind, focuses at the level of works, not descending to a bedrock of “mere objects”; that because works and their appropriate mode of interpretation are constituted by convention‐bound practices, it follows that no clear line can be drawn between properties “in” a work and those “imputed to” it through interpretive procedures endorsed by the practice. The debate over constructivism or “imputationalism”– between Margolis and Krausz, on the one hand, and Stecker and Levinson, on the other – is engaged with an attempt to show a core of truth in each of the conflicting theories, once the right distinction between object, work, and interpretation is in place.

This book examines the complex and varied ways in which fictions relate to the real world, and offers a precise account of how imaginative works of literature can use fictional content to explore matters of universal human interest. While rejecting the traditional view that literature is important for the truths that it imparts, the authors also reject attempts to cut off literature altogether from real human concerns. Their detailed account of fictionality, mimesis, and cognitive value helps restore to literature its distinctive status among cultural practices. The authors also explore the limits of fictionality, particularly in relation to metaphysical and sceptical views, prevalent in modern thought, according to which the world itself is a kind of fiction, and truth no more than a cultural construct. They identify different conceptions of fiction in science, logic, epistemology, and make-believe, and thereby challenge the idea that discourse per se is fictional and that different modes of discourse are, at root, indistinguishable. They offer analyses of the roles of narrative, imagination, metaphor, and ‘making’ in human thought processes. Both in their methods and in their conclusions, the authors aim to bring rigour and clarity to debates about the values of literature, and to provide philosophically sound foundations for a genuine change of direction in literary theorizing.

The paper highlights and reflects on two central themes in Simecek’s book: the role of voice in lyric poetry and the nature of any cognitive value that might arise from the lyric. The paper questions whether too much emphasis is given to the literal spoken voice in the case of page poetry (while acknowledging its centrality in performance poetry). Is perhaps too much weight given to the spoken rendering of a poem by any arbitrary reader? A rather different conception of poetic voice, typical of Modernist poetics, gives priority to rhetorical and linguistic qualities of the language itself in a poem—tone, diction, form, subject, and theme—which, taken across a poet’s oeuvre, can identify a distinctive character in the writing, readily described as the poet’s “voice” but not centred on spoken sounds. On cognitive values, it is useful to emphasise differences in performance and page poetry. The immediacy of the former is more likely to foster solidarity, community, and empathy, in contrast to the more distanced effects possible from reading poems on the page. The idea that reading poems can allow us to encounter perspectives different from our own is clearly right but the view in the book that ultimately this is somehow impossible, given a clash of perspectives, seems unduly pessimistic; but that opens up difficult questions about what exactly these perspectives are.

AS THE twentieth century comes to a close and the twenty-first dawns, the British Journal of Aesthetics begins its fortieth volume and enters its fortieth year. This seems an apt moment, or a good excuse, for a special issue, prefaced by a few general reflections, through the lens of the journal, on nearly half a century of aesthetics and on the prospects ahead. Strictly speaking, the fortieth anniversary of the journal does not fall until the autumn of 2000 as it was in the autumn of 1960 that the first issue appeared. But there is a seductiveness in round numbers and the coincidence of the start of volume 40 with the start of the new millen- nium is justification enough for special attention.1 In fact self-reflection has been a rare event in the BJA. There have been few editorials and only two previous Special Issues, one commemorating the eightieth birthday of the founding editor, Harold Osborne, in 1985 (vol. 25, no. 2), the other in 1994 (vol. 34, no. 1), a collection of papers on the theme of repres- entation. The editorial voice is seldom heard in the journal, at least in the form of observations about the journal’s contents. Both Harold Osborne and Terry Diffey, the two previous editors, were modestly reticent about the development of the journal that they did so much to create and consolidate. On occasion they did publish their own essays and reviews so their ideas on specific topics in aesthetics were on display. Indeed the 1977 volume contained no fewer than four essays and five reviews by Osborne while he was editor. But editorial commentary as such has been light. That said, it has been a feature of the BJA from its inception that the editor’s own stamp has been imprinted on the contents, as a consequence of the large degree of autonomy each editor has possessed in selecting material to publish

For over fifty years, philosophers working within the broader remit of analytic philosophy have developed and refined a substantial body of work in aesthetics and the philosophy of art, curating a core foundation of scholarship which offers rigor and clarity on matters of profound and perennial interest relating to art and all forms of aesthetic appreciation. Now in its second edition and thoroughly revised, Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art—The Analytic Tradition: An Anthology captures this legacy in a comprehensive introduction to the core philosophical questions and conversations in aesthetics. Through 57 key essays selected by leading scholars Peter Lamarque and Stein Haugom Olsen, this anthology collects modern classics as well as new contributions on essential topics such as the identification and ontology of art, interpretation, values of art, art and knowledge, and fiction and the imagination. New to this edition are selections which treat aesthetic experience more widely, including essays on the aesthetics of nature and aesthetics in everyday life. Other carefully-chosen pieces analyze the practice and experience of specific art forms in greater detail, including painting, photography, film, literature, music, and popular art such as comics. This bestselling collection is an essential resource for students and scholars of aesthetics, designed to foster a foundational understanding of both long-standing and contemporary topics in the field.

The paper proposes a radical change of focus for understanding the fundamental purpose and value of literary interpretation. It criticises an orthodox view in analytical philosophy of literature, according to which theories of meaning in the philosophy of language, in particular Gricean or speech act or other pragmatic theories, offer the most illuminating way to grasp the relevant principles of interpretation. The argument here is that the application of such theories in this context is not just wrong in detail (this or that theory needs revising) but wrong in principle. The focus is wrong. The importation of philosophy of language distorts the essential character of interpretation, which should be seen as involving not so much meaning as value, not individual sentences but whole works, not obsessed with authorial intention but focused on the protocols of reading.