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http://books.google.es/books?id=VkpR25ji4-wC&pg=PA141&lpg=PA141&dq=Analytic+Literary+Theory&source=bl&ots=RTvYA3lSfj&sig=bxvhpmWeQo1-Px_M7ZUTjSE8d5s&hl=es&sa=X&ei=5-qHUoS8Iajb0QXd4YD4CA&ved=0CHgQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=Analytic%20Literary%20Theory&f=false

davidson, goodmanaustin-derrida, davidson, deman, rorty, wittgen, cavell,

-Literary Theorists Encounter Analytic Philosophy (Poetics today 11.3 fall 1990)

-Redrawing the Lines: Analytic Philosophy, Deconstruction, and Literary Theory

-Terry Eagletons The Event of Literature

-21st Century Theories of Literature: Essence, Fiction, and Value

grupo: Analytic Literary TheoryThe general objective of analytic literary theory is the combination of insightsfrom traditional literary theory, analytic philosophy, psychology and linguistics in order to shed light on structural and functional features of literary texts. The research group is devoted to the analysis of higher-order properties of n

arrative texts with a special focus on the phenomenon of narrative perspective/focalization.http://www.uni-goettingen.de/en/publications/353908.html

Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art: The Analytic Tradition: An Anthology [Paperback]Peter Lamarque (Editor), Stein Haugom Olsen (Editor)

Donald Davidson, Pragmatism, and Literary TheoryBryan Vescio

From: Philosophy and Literature

Volume 22, Number 1, April 1998pp. 200-211 | 10.1353/phl.1998.0027In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Philosophy and Literature 22.1 (1998) 200-211Notes and Fragments

As perhaps the most influential living philosopher of language, Donald Davidsonwould appear to have much to contribute to the field of literary theory. But Davidson himself has had surprisingly little to say about the implications of his theory of "radical interpretation" for literary interpretation. Lately, literarytheorists have begun to pay more attention to his work, as indicated by the appearance of a collection of essays called Literary Theory After Davidson, and perh

aps in response to this heightened interest, Davidson has written several essaysin recent years that are more explicitly concerned with literary language and with art in general. Although views on how his work applies to literature vary widely, sometimes even within his own writings on the subject, he and most of hisexpositors tend to agree that his theory of communication places certain constraints on the interpretation of literary texts. In this essay, I will argue that the constraints Davidson proposes -- as well as talk of interpretive constraint in general -- run counter to the main thrust of his philosophy of language, whichI believe moves roughly in the direction of Richard Rorty's pragmatism.I

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Although they differ on whether or not to embrace the consequences of Davidson'sphilosophy of language, all the contributors to Literary Theory After Davidsonagree that theoretical descriptions have significant consequences for the practice of literary criticism. A recurring theme in the book is the problem of "relativism," which in literary theory becomes the problem of unlimited interpretation. For several contributors, the possibility of "unconstrained" interpretation isjust as dangerous as other kinds of relativism, and just as Davidson's theory of communication solves the problem of relativism, so it also guarantees that interpretation is constrained. In the book's first essay, Reed Way Dasenbrock anticipates many of the other contributors when he marshals Davidson's theory againstthe "conceptual relativism" of Stanley Fish and others: "By extending this Davidsonian account to the issue of interpreting texts -- which is not something Davidson has done -- we reveal the incoherence of the notion advanced by HerrnsteinSmith and Fish that different readers read different texts" (LT, p. 24). Although the rest of the essays present a variety of attitudes toward both Davidson and the relativity of interpretation, each remains concerned, in one way or another, with the same basic question: how does the extension of Davidson's account ofordinary communication to literary texts either constrain or fail to constraininterpretive activity?

Davidson addresses this same question in his own writing on literature. In "Locating Literary Language," his contribution to Literary Theory After Davidson, heinveighs against the same kind of relativism that troubles Dasenbrock. Since com

munication, on his theory, always involves the correct interpretation of a speaker's intentions, Davidson suggests that adapting this view to literary theory emphasizes the need to focus on the writer's intentions in the interpretation of aliterary text: "Indeed, it is clear to me now that any gesture in the directionof such adaptation will also reveal the need for a sharper focus on the role ofintention in writing, and hence on the relation between writer and reader" (LT,p. 295). It is this focus, Davidson thinks, that will allay fears of the relativity of interpretation. This claim that literary interpretation is always a matter of determining authorial intent is the most consistent note struck in all hiswritings on literature.

In an essay called "James Joyce and Humpty Dumpty," Davidson discusses the "tension between the thought that what a speaker intends by what he says determines w

hat he means and the thought that what a speaker means depends on the history ofthe uses to which the language has been put in the past," aligning himself squarely with the former view. He goes on to show how an emphasis on the role of intention in communication allows us to understand Joyce's innovative language. In"The Third Man," an essay that discusses both the literary and the visual arts,Davidson again stresses the importance of the writer's intentions in the production of textual meaning: "The text, unlike most objects, has...

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Peter Lamarque and Derek Attridge