Philosophical Meta-Reflections on Literary Studies: Why Do Things with Texts, and What to Do with Them?

Description

An examination of key meta-questions in the humanities, with focus on literary studies. Philosophical Meta-Reflections on Literary Studies takes up key meta-questions in the humanities, with focus on contemporary literary studies, philosophically examines the nature of knowledge therein as well as the implications of certain popular critical approaches, and addresses the effervescent question of 'relevance'. In contrast to usual works on literary theory, or on philosophy of literature for that matter, this book presents an integrated meta-reasoning on the foundational questions of literary studies from an interdisciplinary perspective - in a manner of intertextual informality.

Jibu Mathew George is assistant professor in the Department of Indian and World Literatures, School of Literary Studies, the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, India. He is the author of The Ontology of Gods: An Account of Enchantment, Disenchantment, and Re-Enchantment (2017) and Ulysses Quotidianus: James Joyce's Inverse Histories of the Everyday (2016).

'Jibu George's Philosophical Meta-Reflections on Literary Studies is an anatomy or perhaps an x-ray of the assumptions that drive most literary scholarship today. At every turn, I found the book refreshing and provoking. Philosophical Meta-Reflections deserves wide attention.' -Roland Greene, Professor, Stanford University, USA 'Compact yet wide-ranging, abreast of current developments yet tinged with wise scepticism, probing relentlessly yet delicately into the no longer securely available meaning of reading and studying literature, this book delights and challenges at once.' -Galin Tihanov, George Steiner Professor of Comparative Literature, Queen Mary University of London