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Experience and Signs: Towards a Pragmatist Literary Criticism
Abstract
COULD THERE BE A PRAGMATIST LITERARY CRITICISM? Richard Rorty doesn't seem to think so.1 The thinkers lumped under classical made only passing references to literature, and only William James's magpie delight in gathering quotations from Stevenson, Whitman, Tolstoy, and others even approaches an analysis of texts. Why then turn to pragmatism for a method of reading and interpretation? For calisthenics: Pragmatism unstiffens all our theories, limbers them up and sets each one at work.2 This essay seeks to put theories of meaning and representation in literary criticism on the stretching bar by reorienting them towards pragmatist conceptions of process, action, and experience. In particular, it asks What does a text do? rather than What does a text mean? and then traces the difference that this difference makes.
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“However, in the application of speech act linguistics to the study of documents, there is a disturbing tendency either to misuse speech act theory or to provide an empty gesture to speech acts in particular, as Gorman has discussed in terms of literary criticism”
From Studies in dhāraṇī literature II: Pragmatics of dhāraṇī s (2014) · cites this paper as Gaskill 2008
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Studies in dhāraṇī literature II: Pragmatics of dhāraṇī s
Davidson, R. M. (2014) · Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies · doi:10.1017/s0041977x13000943 · Cited by 8
Metadata
- Authors
- Gaskill, N. M.
- Corresponding author
- Gaskill, Nicholas M.
- ORCID
- Gaskill, Nicholas M.
- Venue
- New Literary History
- Publisher
- Project MUSE
- Published
- 2008-12
- Volume
- 39
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 165-183
- ISSN
- 0028-6087 (ISSN-L)
- 1080-661X
- OpenAlex
- W2033338357
- Cited by
- 21
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 9 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 1 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 1 · 2018: 1 · 2014: 3
- FWCI
- 6.50
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- New Literary History (publishedVersion)
- Project Muse (Johns Hopkins University) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Pragmatism in Philosophy and Education
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Literature and Literary Theory › Literary Theory and Cultural Hermeneutics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Literature and Literary Theory › American and British Literature Analysis
- Keywords
- Richard Rorty, pragmatism, meaning, representation, experience, signs, William James, interpretation theory, process
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- Gaskill, N. M. (2008). Experience and Signs: Towards a Pragmatist Literary Criticism. New Literary History. https://doi.org/10.1353/nlh.0.0013
