Continuum is extremely proud to announce the publication of Stanley Cavell and Literary Studies: Consequences of Skepticism, available now in the US and coming to the UK in just three short weeks. Though Cavell has been a towering figure in philosophy departments for decades, his thought and work have been largely absent from debates in literary studies and literary theory. Editors Richard Eldridge (Charles and Harriett Cox McDowell Professor of Philosophy, Swarthmore College, PA, USA) and Bernard Rhie (Associate Professor of English, Williams College, USA) have now begun to fill this gap by commissioning and collecting essays on Cavell's relevance to literary studies from a truly impressive array of scholars. Stanley Cavell and Literary Studies is sure to become required reading for anyone interested in the intersections between philosophy and literature. Cavell's is an essential voice that demands to be heard; now, literary scholars, critics and theorists are sure to begin listening.
For now, here's a table of contents to whet your appetite:
1. Introduction:
Cavell, Literary Studies, and the Human Subject: Consequences of Skepticism
Richard Eldridge and Bernard Rhie
I. Principles
2. The Adventure of Reading: Literature and Philosophy, Cavell and Beauvoir
Toril Moi
3. “Is ‘Us’ Me?” Cultural Studies and the Universality of Aesthetic Judgments
R. M. Berry
4. Cavell and Kant: The Work of Criticism and the Work of Art
Anthony J. Cascardi
5. Cavell and Wittgenstein on Morality: The Limits of Acknowledgment
Charles Altieri
6. The Word Viewed: Skepticism Degree Zero
Garrett Stewart
7. A Storied World: On Meeting and Being Met
Naomi Scheman
8. Skepticism and the Idea of an Other: Reflections on Cavell and Postcolonialism
Simona Bertacco and John Gibson
II. Practices
9. William Shakespeare and Stanley Cavell: Acknowledging, Confessing, and Tragedy
Sarah Beckwith
10. Competing for the Soul: Cavell on Shakespeare
Lawrence F. Rhu
11. “Communicating with Objects”: Romanticism, Skepticism, and “The Specter of Animism” in Cavell and Wordsworth
Joshua Wilner
12. Emerson Discomposed: Skepticism, Naturalism, and the Search for Criteria in “Experience”
Paul Grimstad
13. Beside Ourselves: Near, Neighboring and Next-to in Cavell’s The Senses of Walden and William Carlos Williams’s “Fine Work with Pitch and Copper”
Elisa New
14. For all You Know
Andrew H. Miller
15. Empiricism, Exhaustion, and Meaning What We Say: Cavell and Contemporary Fiction
Robert Chodat