The third meeting of the Ecologies of Style reading group will talk around:
Charles Altieri, ‘Style’, The Oxford Handbook of Literature and Philosophy (2009), ed. Richard Elldridge.
Friday 22nd November, 1.30 – 3.00, I4, Corpus Christi.
The reading group is open to doctoral students, post-docs and research colleagues.
Contact: Drew Milne, agm33@cam.ac.uk
abstract of Charles Altieri’s essay:
“This article looks at the history of the study of literary style. It claims that style should be seen as purposive activity inseparable from the aesthetic shaping of the work as a whole and that the best way of modeling this activity is to take the foregrounding of style as a demonstrative speech act. It analyzes the works of Dante and argues that style matters in art and life because if we fail to establish manner as substance, we have only picture thinking. If we are reduced to picture thinking, we lose any language either for the variations in intensity afforded by aesthetic experiences or for the capacity to make discriminations that having that repository of examples might afford.”
