Fictions of Fact and Value

The Erasure of Logical Positivism in American Literature, 1945-1975
Erscheinungsjahr 2016
ISBN: 978-0-19-062397-5
Verlag: Oxford University Press

Buch, Englisch, 256 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 442 g

Fictions of Fact and Value argues that the philosophy of logical positivism, considered the antithesis of literary postmodernism, exerts a determining influence on the development of American fiction in the three decades following 1945. Two particular postwar literary preoccupations derive from logical positivist philosophy: the fact/value problem and the correlative distinction between sense and nonsense. Even as postwar writers responded to logical
positivism as a threat to the imagination, their works often manifest its influence, specifically with regard to 'emotive' or 'meaningless' terms. Far from a straightforward history of ideas, Michael LeMahieu charts a genealogy that is often erased in the very texts where it registers and disowned by the very
authors that it includes. Reading works by John Barth, Saul Bellow, Don DeLillo, Iris Murdoch, Flannery O'Connor, Thomas Pynchon, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, Fictions of Fact and Value will interest anyone concerned with postmodernism, modernist studies, analytic philosophy, or the history of ideas.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Lemahieu, Michael

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturgeschichte und Literaturkritik
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Theorie, Politische Philosophie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Sozialphilosophie, Politische Philosophie

Über Autor(innen)

Michael LeMahieu is Associate Professor of English at Clemson University.