The Problem of Literary Value (Manchester Medieval Literature and Culture) - Hardcover

Meyer-Lee, Robert J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1526167948 ISBN 13: 9781526167941

Publisher: Manchester University Press, 2023

Synopsis

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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About this title

About the Author

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

From the Back Cover

Literary value - the worth, usefulness or importance of the literary - has been a topic of debate ever since Plato's impugning of poetry. But from the so-called canon wars of the last century to the present, literary value has also become a perplexing source of distress. With its complicities thoroughly unmasked, literary value no longer serves as the central, self-evident justification for the study of literature. Yet no alternative consensus justification has taken its place.

This book, unlike other approaches to the topic, pursues neither an apologetic thesis about the most defining values of literature nor a critique of their ideological uses. Instead, arguing that the category of literary value is ultimately 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 intractable uncertainties. The book offers a preliminary theory of literary valuing and explores the problem of literary value and possible responses 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. The book thereby also supplies an extended reflection on the state of Chaucer studies. In extrapolating from this subfield to the field as a whole, The problem of literary value seeks to forge a viable rationale for literary studies within and beyond the academy.

Edition details

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1526167948
• ISBN 13: 9781526167941
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 296