Language, Truth, and Literature

In Language, Truth, and Literature, Richard Gaskin defends literary humanism on the basis that works of literature refer. His writing is a model of composition, concision, and clarity, and literary humanism is delineated on the first page of the preface: literary works have an objective meaning; aesthetic value and cognitive value are linked; and the aesthetic-cognitive value of a work of literature is in virtue of the work making true statements about the world (viii). This outline is subsequently developed into a definition consisting of six distinct claims, for each of which convincing evidence is provided. The monograph is divided into sixty-four numbered sections and twelve chapters. The first three chapters establish Gaskin’s theory of literature, which is often contrasted with Peter Lamarque and Stein Haugom Olsen’s no-truth theory from Truth, Fiction, and Literature.1 The fourth defends the theory against objections from analytic philosophy; and the remaining eight, against objections from literary theory. Gaskin presents compelling critiques of reception theory, the intentional fallacy, and post-structural criticism, with particular attention to the work of Stanley Fish, Terry Eagleton, Jacques Derrida, and Jonathan Bate. The bulk of the preface (x–xvii) is a commentary on changes in higher education in the UK in the last twenty years that will resonate with many academics. I mention this because the final section of the book is written in a similar tone as Gaskin expresses his dissatisfaction with the radicalization of universities from the late sixties to the present. This personal concern explains why a significant proportion of the book (about two-fifths) is directed against deconstructive criticism, which Gaskin acknowledges as having been discredited by his predecessors, most notably John Searle in ‘Literary Theory and Its Discontents’, and elsewhere, and John M. Ellis in Against Deconstruction.2

Art · CLARITY · Epistemology · Humanism · Linguistics · Literary criticism · Literary theory · Literature · Meaning (existential · Pragmatic theory of truth · Theology · Value (mathematics · Virtue · Ethics, Aesthetics, and Art · Philosophy · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism · Wittgensteinian philosophy and applications

• ‘Chocolate-covered Broccoli’? Games and the Teaching of Literature

  I W J Hopkins, Izabela Hopkins et al.•Changing English•2015

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