Aesthetics & Ethics: Otherness and Moral Imagination from Aristotle to Levinas and from 'uncle Tom's Cabin' to 'house Made of Dawn: 163 (American Studies - A Monograph) - Hardcover

Claviez, Professor Of Literary Theory & Director Of The Center For Cultural Studies Thomas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 3825354539 ISBN 13: 9783825354534

Publisher: Universitatsverlag Winter, 2008

Synopsis

In a first, theoretical part, this study analyzes what role "otherness" plays in the most influential moral-philosophical approaches to date - from Aristotle and the Neo-Aristotelians (Alasdair MacIntyre, Martha Nussbaum) via Kantianism and its deconstructors (Jean-Francois Lyotard, J. Hillis Miller) to the works of Paul Ricoeur and Emmanuel Levinas - and sheds light on its highly problematic status in Western notions of justice and aesthetics. Starting from a revised notion of the sublime, the second part uses the different theoretical approaches to interpret four American novels (Harriet Beecher Stowe's 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', Herman Melville's 'Billy Budd, Sailor', Richard Wright's 'Native Son', and N. Scott Momaday's 'House Made of Dawn'), and examines how far the respective moral-philosophical systems carry in elucidating these texts, as well as what role literary-historical and generic strategies play in dramatizing the encounter with "otherness."

About this edition

• Publisher: Universitatsverlag Winter
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 3825354539
• ISBN 13: 9783825354534
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 466