Poiesis and possible worlds: A study in modality and poetic theory

Thomas Lawrence Martin, Purdue University

Abstract

Hintikka's distinction between language as universal medium and language as calculus--called by him "the most important and most neglected general feature of the philosophy of language and philosophy of logic in the twentieth century"--has been applied by Hintikka and others to analytical philosophy and by Kusch to continental philosophy The first section of the dissertation, Chapters One and Two extend that analysis by applying it to major figures and schools in critical theory. The view of language as universal medium is presented in the second chapter as "the paradox of the one," its linguistic picture giving way to a semantical critique, and its shortcomings exposed not only in analytical and continental philosophy, but also in various representatives of the structuralist, poststructuralist, and new historicist traditions. "The paradox of the many" in the first chapter represents a logical critique, specifically locating a version of Zeno's paradox of plurality in the argument strategies of the poststructuralists Barthes, Lyotard, Deleuze and Guartarri, as well as Derrida. The second section of the dissertation develops from the view of language as calculus an alternative understanding of linguistic phenomena, finding in a Hintikka-type possible-worlds semantics a place for unity in the midst of linguistic and cultural multiplicity, and balancing the notion of linguistic and literary convention with a refortified notion of invention. By reintroducing literary invention in this way, the project corrects an undue reliance on linguistic convention and social transaction, through which literary texts are typically explained by a limited set of "meaningful" categories. The third and fourth chapters develop out of the view of language as calculus a general theory of possibility for literature. In the final section, Chapter Five applies the theoretical orientation to several dominant issues in literary and critical theory--not to a theory of fiction as has Dolezel, Pavel, Ryan, Eco, and other possible-worlds theorists--but at a lower level to the definition of literature, to verbal figuration in the theory of metaphor, and to models of reading.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Miller, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Language|Philosophy|Linguistics|British and Irish literature

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