The Quality of Literature

Linguistic studies in literary evaluation

Editor
Willie van Peer | Ludwig Maximilian University
HardboundAvailable
ISBN 9789027233363 | EUR 99.00 | USD 149.00
 
e-Book
ISBN 9789027291516 | EUR 99.00 | USD 149.00
 
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Evaluation is central to literary studies and has led to an impressive list of publications on the status and history of the canon. Yet it is remarkable how little attention has been given to the role of textual properties in evaluative processes. Most of the chapters in The Quality of Literature redress this issue by dealing with texts or genres ranging from classical antiquity, via Renaissance to twentieth century. They provide a rich textual and historical panorama of how critical debate over literary quality has influenced our modes of thinking and feeling about literature, and how they continue to shape the current literary landscape. Four theoretical chapters reflect on the general state of literary evaluation while the introduction weaves the different threads together aiming at further conceptual clarification. This book thus contributes to a deeper understanding of the problems that are at the heart of past and present debates over literary quality.
[Linguistic Approaches to Literature, 4] 2008.  ix, 243 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Table of Contents
“While there is growing interest in the psychology of beauty and aesthetics applied to visual art forms, literature is often given the short end of the stick. Psych and the Literary Muses is an example of beautiful writing in itself, with research results sprinkled about. How can the written word stir our souls, awaken our senses, and stimulate our thoughts? What properties of the text can have such an affect on the reader? By looking at the Psychology of literature from the vantage point of the text, Lindauer offers fresh and deep insight into the experience of reading, balancing work being done by psychology of creative writing researchers on the psychological quirks of the writer. Lindauer’s broad knowledge base of literature shines through in his writing and only adds to the respectability of his ideas. By connecting the text to such diverse topics as person perception, creativity, learning, and even aging, Lindauer opens up avenues for research that scholars across a variety of fields may not have even known existed. At the same time, he creates bridges across those avenues in a way that scholars, readers, writers, and almost anyone with a healthy (or even unhealthy) dose of interest in the psychology of literature can relate and appreciate.”
“This is a book that could potentially become on the cutting edge of literary study. I have been impressed, over the years, with Prof. Lindauer's attempts to integrate the study of imaginative literature and contemporary psychology. This book looks like a solid contribution to the developing paradigm of literary study and empirical psychology.”
“This is an excellent volume, of an academic and intellectual standard that should be attractive to any university press in the English-speaking world… The book is likely to be highly controversial precisely because it goes against the grain of Anglophone literary study of the past quarter-century. This controversy is precisely what is needed in the field ­ and has been needed for many years.”
Cited by

Cited by 10 other publications

Chapman, Siobhan
2020. Literary Rewriting. In The Pragmatics of Revision,  pp. 15 ff. DOI logo
Colombetti, Giovanna, Achim Stephan, John-Dylan Haynes, Christoph Huth, Alexander Bergs, Peter Schneck, Jan Slaby, Jens Kuhn, Tobias Skuban-Eiseler, Wolfgang Huff, Sarah Rudorf, Bernd Weber, Saskia K. Nagel, Imke Biermann, Wendy Wilutzky & Sven Walter
2013. Neuere Entwicklungen. In Handbuch Kognitionswissenschaft,  pp. 501 ff. DOI logo
Gavins, Joanna
2009. The year’s work in stylistics 2008. Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics 18:4  pp. 367 ff. DOI logo
Hanauer, David I.
2015. Beauty judgements of non-professional poetry. Scientific Study of Literature 5:2  pp. 183 ff. DOI logo
Koolen, Corina & Andreas van Cranenburgh
2018. Blue eyes and porcelain cheeks: Computational extraction of physical descriptions from Dutch chick lit and literary novels. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 33:1  pp. 59 ff. DOI logo
Lauwers, Jeroen, Tom Deneire & David Eelbode
2015. The question of literary quality. Scientific Study of Literature 5:1  pp. 3 ff. DOI logo
Rippl, Gabriele & Simone Winko
2013. Anhang. In Handbuch Kanon und Wertung,  pp. 413 ff. DOI logo
Towns, Stuart G. & Richard Watson Todd
2019. Beyond proficiency. English Text Construction 12:2  pp. 265 ff. DOI logo
Zyngier, Sonia
2010. Book reviews: New Beginnings in Literary Studies, by Jan Auracher and Willie van Peer (eds), 2008. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. xvi + 451. ISBN (10) 1 84718 594 0, ISBN (13) 9781 84718 594 5. Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics 19:3  pp. 319 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2011. Bibliography. In Such Stuff as Dreams,  pp. 239 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 16 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Subjects

Linguistics

Semiotics

Literature & Literary Studies

Theoretical literature & literary studies

Main BIC Subject

DSA: Literary theory

Main BISAC Subject

LIT000000: LITERARY CRITICISM / General
ONIX Metadata
ONIX 2.1
ONIX 3.0
U.S. Library of Congress Control Number:  2007047268 | Marc record