The Experience of Fiction: Literature, Language, Interpretation

"Unlocking Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics and working across phenomenology, analytic philosophy, and literary criticism, this book argues that our capacity for language is the bedrock of fiction and of our experience of its worlds. The author reads Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Woolf's To the Lighthouse, demonstrating that by harnessing the structure of fictional worlds that our minds navigate as we read, masterworks of fiction expose our capacity for language for what it is: a capacity to be otherwise and to exceed ourselves. This study injects new verve into the burgeoning conversation between literary scholars and philosophers of art and language"-- Provided by publisher.