Stanley Cavell and the Claim of Literature

David Rudrum

• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781421410494
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism Theory
• Index: Literature

An analysis of the significance of literature in the work of one of America's most influential contemporary philosophers.

Stanley Cavell is widely recognized as one of America's most important contemporary philosophers, and his legacy and writings continue to attract considerable attention among literary critics and theorists. Stanley Cavell and the Claim of Literature comprehensively addresses the importance of literature in Cavell's philosophy and, in turn, the potential effect of his philosophy on contemporary literary criticism.

David Rudrum dedicates a chapter to each of the writers that principally occupy Cavell, including Shakespeare, Thoreau, Beckett, Wordsworth, Ibsen, and Poe, and incorporates chapters on tragedy, skepticism, ethics, and politics. Through detailed analysis of these works, Rudrum explores Cavell's ideas on the nature of reading; the relationships among literary language, ordinary language, and performative language; the status of authors and characters; the link between tragedy and ethics; and the nature of political conversation in a democracy.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviated Titles
• Introduction: Approaching the Unapproachable
• 1 Making Sense(s) of Walden
• 2 The Avoidance of Shakespeare
• 3 From the Sublime to the Ordinary: Stanley Cavell’s Beckett
• 4 How to Do Things with Wordsworth
• 5 What Did Cavell Want of Poe?
• 6 “Politics as Opposed to What?”: Social Contract and Marriage Contract in A Doll’s House
• 7 Tragedy’s Tragedies: Between the Skeptical and the Ethical
• Conclusion: Just an Ordinary American Tragedy
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index