Neohelicon
Volume/Issue:
Volume 34: Issue 1
The value of suspending values
Author:
Paolo Bartoloni University of Sydney Italian Studies & International and Comparative Literary Studies A18, 2006 NSW Australia A18, 2006 NSW Australia

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Pages:
115–122
Online Publication Date:
27 Apr 2007
Publication Date:
27 Jun 2007
Article Category:
Research Article
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-007-1011-0
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Abstract  

This article sets out to interrogate the notion of literary value by placing it within a broader discussion of literature’s relation to truth. It asks, in other words, if it is possible to evince the value of literature by assuming that literature is a carrier of certain truths. Institutions have in turn been called upon or even created to evaluate and demonstrate its value according to a series of criteria often based on the investigation of the relation author-work-audience. I argue that the dynamicity of literary values, their development and changeability, is related to the priority that one of the terms of the relation author-work-audience has enjoyed over the others at different historical times. I also argue that the emphasis on the link between literary values and strong truths (demonstrable truths) has produced disabling dichotomies and, perhaps more importantly, violated the nature of literature in relation to experience — phenomenological, ontological, metaphysical or aesthetic experience. This article introduces an alternative approach to literary value predicated not so much on strong truth as on weak truth. In this context reference will be made to the work of the Italian philosophers Mario Perniola and Gianni Vattimo.

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Cover Neohelicon
Neohelicon
Print ISSN:
0324-4652
Online ISSN:
1588-2810

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Neohelicon
Language English
Size B5
Year of
Foundation		 1973
Volumes
per Year		 1
Issues
per Year		 2
Founder Akadémiai Kiadó
Founder's
Address		 H-1117 Budapest, Hungary 1516 Budapest, PO Box 245.
Publisher Akadémiai Kiadó
Springer Nature Switzerland AG
Publisher's
Address		 H-1117 Budapest, Hungary 1516 Budapest, PO Box 245.
CH-6330 Cham, Switzerland Gewerbestrasse 11.
Responsible
Publisher		 Chief Executive Officer, Akadémiai Kiadó
ISSN 0324-4652 (Print)
ISSN 1588-2810 (Online)

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