Paradigms Regained

This monograph represents an effort to reclaim for literary study certain legitimate territories that have been needlessly abandoned on the theoretical battlefield. Despite assertions to the contrary by poststructuralist or new historicist critics, it contends, it is still possible to talk usefully about such issues as literary intentionality, stable references, determinate meaning and objective value judgements of literary works. The author bases his arguments not on Continental thought, but on Anglo-American analytic and pragmatic philosophers, including Donald Davidson, Michael Dummett, Nelson Goodman, Hilary Putnam, John Searle and Israel Scheffler.