Literary ethics

Heinz Antor

pp. 243-247

in: Martin Middeke, Timo Müller, Christina Wald, Hubert Zapf (eds), English and American studies, Stuttgart, Metzler, 2012

Abstract

Literary ethics is a concept referring to the interconnectedness of literature, literary criticism, and ethics. When talking about literary ethics nowadays we usually think of the field of ethical criticism which has been flourishing ever since the so-called "ethical turn in literary studies' in the late 1980s and 1990s (cf. Gras). However, the history of critical analysis of the connections between notions of the good, values, morals, and the resulting norms on the one hand, and literature on the other, reaches back much further than that, in fact right to the beginnings of literary criticism.