Wittgenstein and Modernist Fiction: The Language of Acknowledgment

In the early decades of the 20th century, novelists responded to economic and cultural upheaval by questioning the capacity of language to picture the world accurately. This book argues that modernist novels by E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, Nella Larsen, William Faulkner, and others exhibit a similar interest in language's capacity to grant acknowledgment, offering readers a way of hearing "the silent soliloquy of others."

Format: Hardback
Length: 250 pages
Publication date: 08 February 2022
Publisher: Anthem Press

The early 1900s were a time of significant economic and cultural transformation throughout Europe and America. Scholars have often argued that novelists responded to these changes by questioning the ability of language to accurately depict the world. However, even as modernist novels move away from a view of language as a tool for acquiring knowledge, they also emphasize its capacity to grant acknowledgment. They treat words as tools for recognizing and responding to the inner lives of others.

This book explores this crucial aspect of modernism by engaging with the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein and with Stanley Cavell's pioneering interpretation of Wittgenstein's thought. The book demonstrates how Wittgenstein's interest in acknowledgment emerges throughout his career-long effort to grapple with the same disorienting conditions of modern life that the experimental fiction of this period registers, including world wars, industrialization, and new conceptions of sexuality. It then argues that modernist novels by E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, Nella Larsen, William Faulkner, and others exhibit a similar interest in the capacity of language to grant acknowledgment. These novels offer readers a way of hearing what Wittgenstein calls "the silent soliloquy of others," providing us with words by which we might acknowledge the otherwise unvoiced inner lives of socially marginalized figures.

In conclusion, the early decades of the twentieth century were a period of profound economic and cultural upheaval, and novelists responded to these changes by questioning the ability of language to accurately depict the world. However, even as modernist novels move away from a view of language as a means of acquiring knowledge, they also emphasize its capacity to grant acknowledgment. This book explores this crucial aspect of modernism by engaging with the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein and with Stanley Cavell's pioneering interpretation of Wittgenstein's thought. It demonstrates how Wittgenstein's interest in acknowledgment emerges throughout his career-long effort to grapple with the same disorienting conditions of modern life that the experimental fiction of this period registers, and it argues that modernist novels by E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, Nella Larsen, William Faulkner, and others exhibit a similar interest in the capacity of language to grant acknowledgment. These novels offer readers a way of hearing what Wittgenstein calls "the silent soliloquy of others," providing us with words by which we might acknowledge the otherwise unvoiced inner lives of socially marginalized figures.

Weight: 454g
Dimension: 229 x 153 x 26 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781839980633