The problem of literary value
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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The problem of literary value
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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The problem of literary value

The problem of literary value

by Robert J. Meyer-Lee
The problem of literary value

The problem of literary value

by Robert J. Meyer-Lee

Hardcover

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Overview

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.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781526167941
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Publication date: 05/30/2023
Series: Manchester Medieval Literature and Culture
Pages: 296
Product dimensions: 5.43(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.69(d)

About the Author

Robert J. Meyer-Lee is Professor of English at Agnes Scott College

Table of Contents

Introduction: the problem of literary value
1 Literary value and the object of Chaucer studies
2 A preliminary theory of literary valuing
3 Loose binding and its affordances
4 Canonicity
5 Interpretation
Postscript: losing my religion
References

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