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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Problem of Literary Value

The Problem of Literary Value

Meyer-Lee, Robert J.

Hardcover

Series: Manchester Medieval Literature and Culture

Literary CriticismGeneral Education

ISBN10: 1526167948
ISBN13: 9781526167941
Publisher: Manchester Univ Pr
Published: May 30 2023
Pages: 296
Weight: 1.03
Height: 0.69 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English

This book addresses the vexed status of literary value. Unlike other approaches, it pursues neither an apologetic thesis about literature's defining values nor, conversely, a demystifying account of those values' ideological uses. Instead, arguing that the category of literary value is inescapable, it focuses pragmatically on everyday scholarly and pedagogical activities, proposing how we may reconcile that category's inevitability with our understandable wariness of its uncertainties and complicities. Toward these ends, it offers a preliminary theory of literary valuing and explores the problem of literary value in respect to the literary edition, canonicity and interpretation. Much of this exploration occurs within Chaucer studies, which, because of Chaucer's simultaneous canonicity and marginality, provides fertile ground for thinking through the problem's challenges. Using this subfield as a synecdoche, the book seeks to forge a viable rationale for literary studies generally.

An electronic edition of this book is freely available under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND) licence.

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