What is Fiction For

What is the use of literature? Can we make any significant cognitive gains from reading literature? What is the relationship between literary fiction and reality/nature? What is the value of literary criticism? These are the central questions that concern Harrison in his book, What is Fiction For?, where he attempts to present a comprehensive account of the use of literature for the understanding of human life. This is a useful monograph for those who are new to Harrison’s work as well as those of us who are already familiar. In this book, we can see the development of ideas from some of his earlier work, such as Word and World: Practice and the Foundations of Language,1 which was co-authored with Patricia Hanna, and Inconvenient Fictions: Literature and the Limits of Theory.2 The book proceeds in a careful and exploratory way set in conversation with great historical thinkers, both critics and philosophers, including Kermode, Nietzsche, Derrida, Habermas, Wittgenstein and Leavis, which helps to make clear the development of a hugely original and rich defence of literary humanism

Art · Conversation · Criticism · Epistemology · Humanism · Linguistics · Literary criticism · Literary fiction · Literary science · Literary theory · Literature · Reading (process · Set (abstract data type · Sociology · Value (mathematics · Computer Science · Philosophy · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism · Wittgensteinian philosophy and applications