The concept of literature

Stein Olsen

pp. 186-208

in: Anders Pettersson, The concept of literary application, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012

Abstract

Some thinkers about literature regard the aesthetic approach to literary art as the only valid one. They adopt what I have called "the delightful-object view" of literature and maintain that application is not aesthetically relevant, since application is not concerned with the aesthetic aspect of literature.¹ This is the aesthetic argument against application, intrinsically related to, but not identical with, the textual-supremacy argument. As I emphasized in Chapter 7, "aesthetic" can be understood in several ways, and application is easy to reconcile with weaker versions of the aesthetic approach to literature. Yet the strong, "delightful-object" variety of the aesthetic approach is, by definition, impossible to combine with a belief in the artistic and aesthetic importance of application.

Cited authors

Barthes Roland