Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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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
Unorthodox Views: Reflections on Reality, Truth, and Meaning in Current Social, Cultural, and Critical Discourse

Unorthodox Views: Reflections on Reality, Truth, and Meaning in Current Social, Cultural, and Critical Discourse

Battersby, James L.

Hardcover

Series: Contributions to the Study of World Literature, Book 111

Literary Criticism

ISBN10: 0313321663
ISBN13: 9780313321665
Publisher: Praeger
Published: Mar 30 2002
Pages: 236
Weight: 1.16
Height: 0.95 Width: 6.40 Depth: 9.56
Language: English

Much of contemporary critical theory holds that meaning is relative and subjective. This book scrutinizes the principal assumptions and beliefs about mind, language, meaning, truth, and reality governing current debate and discussion not only in literary criticism and theory but also in the broader academic culture. In doing so, the volume brings support to the growing number of scholars who are expressing renewed interest in authors, determinate meanings, formal and aesthetic issues, and related concerns, but who have been laboring without sufficient theoretical arguments or justifications. Moving beyond critique, the book offers rigorous defenses of alternatives to the prevailing critical orthodoxies.

The first five chapters address foundational issues, arguing against or exposing the limitations of the most common forms of linguistic idealism, social constructivism, and relativism. These initial chapters prepare the way for subsequent discussions of more text-based matters, such as the authorial determination of artistic effects, the bases of our emotional and evaluative responses to fiction, the justifications of our decisions about intrinsic merit and artistic value, and other matters crucial to our understanding of the meanings and values implicit in human expression.

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