To read a poem as a form of life is to attend to the human practices that give its words force. A poem may describe grief, weather, work, desire or public…
Stories
Reading a Poem as a Form of Life
Bibliography of Recent Work on Wittgenstein and Literary Theory
Recent scholarship on Wittgenstein and literary theory sits between philosophy, criticism, aesthetics, and the study of ordinary language. It asks how meaning…
How examples work in Cavell’s The Claim of Reason
Stanley Cavell’s The Claim of Reason is often approached as a major work in ordinary language philosophy, a study of scepticism, or a sustained engagement with…
Ordinary Language, Poetry, And The Work Of A CFP
A call for papers on ordinary language and lyric voice invites scholars to examine how poetry makes meaning through familiar words, social practices, tone,…
Reading Wittgenstein Through Literary Form
The New Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein and Literature brings together a field that has often been discussed in fragments: Wittgenstein’s philosophy of…
How Ordinary Language Philosophy Reimagines Fictional Character
Ordinary language philosophy begins with a practical suspicion: philosophical problems often arise when words are removed from the everyday situations that…
J.L. Austin’s Speech Act Theory and the Performance of Poetry
J.L. Austin’s account of language as action offers literary studies a precise way to ask what a poem does. A lyric may describe grief, summon a landscape,…
Wittgenstein’s Language-Games In Literary Analysis
Wittgenstein’s concept of language-games offers literary studies a way to examine meaning as something people do together. Words acquire force through their…
Stanley Cavell on Shakespeare and Skepticism: The Winter’s Tale
Stanley Cavell’s account of scepticism offers a powerful way to read Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale. The play begins with a man who doubts what is directly…