Fictions of fact and value : the erasure of logical positivism in American literature, 1945-1975
Title:
Fictions of fact and value : the erasure of logical positivism in American literature, 1945-1975
Author:
LeMahieu, Michael.
ISBN:
9780199890415
9780199369652
Personal Author:
Physical Description:
1 online resource (viii, 244 pages)
General Note:
Includes index.
Contents:
"Indigestible residues": Ludwig Wittgenstein, aesthetic negativism, and the incompleteness of logical positivism -- "Negative appearance": Flannery O'Connor, the fact/value problem, and the threat of logical positivism -- "Contradictory feelings": John Barth, non-mystical value-thinking, and the exhaustion of logical positivism -- "Eternal things": Saul Bellow, the infinite longings of the soul, and the shortcomings of logical positivism -- "Illogical negativism": Thomas Pynchon, the critique of modernism, and the erasure of logical positivism.
Abstract:
'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 in what amounts to a constitutive encounter between literature and philosophy at mid-century: after the end of the modernism, as it was traditionally conceived, but prior to the rise of postmodernism, as it came to be known.
Electronic Access:
EBSCOhost http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=637046