Old Feuds and New Alliances between Philosophy and Literature
Old Feuds and New Alliances between Philosophy and Literature

Summary/Abstract: The article explores a hypothesis according to which what came to be known as literary theory may have deeper roots than those identified either in a nineteenth century paradigmatic shift in philosophy, or in cultural criticism a century later. More precisely, it proposes that the long traditional tension between philosophy and poetics may have made it equally possible both for literature to be “theorised” and for philosophy to become “narrativised.” With Plato, the scholastics, Hume and Frege firmly on the side of philosophical clarity and truth, and with Aristotle, Horace, Boccaccio, Sidney and the English Romantics defending a truth of the poetic order, the history of the dispute seems to supply an inexhaustible chain of arguments for both parties. Perhaps it takes a more pragmatic (a pragmatist) approach to truth, if not to resolve the conflict, then at least to put it first into perspective, and then to better use.

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