Ethics, Theory and the Novel

by David Parker

Overview

The virtual suppression of ethical and evaluative discourse by current literary theory can be seen as the triumph of one post-Enlightenment tradition over others vital to a full account of humanity and literary value. In Ethics, Theory and the Novel David Parker shows that current silences about ethics are as damaging as the earlier political silences of Leavisism and New Criticism. He goes on to examine Middlemarch, Anna Karenina, and novels by D.H. Lawrence, exploring the consequences for major literary works of the suppression of ethical traditions.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521070317
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	07/31/2008
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.70(d)

Table of Contents

Part I. The Ethical Unconscious: 1. Evaluative discourse: the return of the repressed; 2. A new turn toward the ethical; 3. The judgmental unconscious; 4. The libidinal unconscious; 5. Dynamic interrelatedness: or, the novel walking away with the nail; Part II. Social Beings and Innocents: 6. 'Bound in Charity': Middlemarch; 7. Forgetting and disorientation in Anna Karenina; 8. Two ideas of innocence in The white peacock; 9. Into the ideological unknown: Women in love; 10. Lawrence and Lady Chatterley: the teller and the tale; Part III. Towards a new evaluative Discourse.

Editorial Reviews

"Parker's discussion is intelligent and well-informed." Philosophy and Literature

"Ethics, Theory and the Novel is, then, both timely and accomplished; and a measure of its accomplishment is that it brings to this interdisciplinary 'turn' a subtlety of literary analysis that would have pleased even exponents of earlier, more intellectually insular, forms of humanist literary criticism." Philosophy and literature

From the Publisher