Literature and Understanding: The Value of a Close Reading of Literary Texts

Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication Page
Contents
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgements
1 Literary fiction as a subgenre of both literature and fiction
	Fiction
	Literature
	Literary fiction
2 Literary cognitivism, anti-cognitivism and non-cognitivism
	Literary cognitivism
	Literary anti-cognitivism
	Literary non-cognitivism
	The literariness of literary cognitivism
3 Understanding others from understanding literary fiction
	Understanding human thought and action
	Five senses of ‘understanding’
	Close analysis and interpretation
	The charge of elitism
	The charge of subjectivity
4	The cognitive gain from reading literary fiction as literature
	Irony
	Particularity and precision
	Particularity
	Precision
	Metaphor
	Perspective
	Ambiguity
	Repetition
	Aesthetic effectiveness
	Close analysis and intellectual virtue
5	How understanding literary fiction relates to the world beyond literary fiction
	The standard account of checking literary fiction against the world
	Concession to the standard account
	Objections to the standard account
	My thesis as an alternative model
	Truth-tracking vs truth-trailing relations
Concluding remarks
Appendix: The affliction
Bibliography
Index