Research
I study the use of paraphrases in book reviews of Norwegian novels that, in one way or another, sparked conversations about the uses and abuses of literature and about the aesthetical and ethical concerns of literature among both book reviewers and literary scholars. The novels in my selection are Professor Hieronimus (1895) by Amalie Skram, The Song of the Red Ruby (1957) by Agnar Mykle and My Struggle [First book] (2009) by Karl Ove Knausgaard. The aim of my Ph.D. project is threefold: to highlight the importance of the paraphrase, to lay bare the connection between paraphrasing and aesthetical judgement, and to analyze the relationship between ethics and aesthetics in book reviews. My critical approach is rooted in ordinary language philosophy, and I refer particularly to Stanley Cavell’s and Toril Moi’s research and interpretations of Ludwig Wittgenstein and J. L. Austin. To inquire into the relationship between ethics and aesthetics in the book reviews, I furthermore use Cavell’s thoughts on the criteria of judgement from Claim of Reason (1979) and his discussions of Cleanth Brooks and the paraphrase in his essay “Aesthetic Problems of Modern Philosophy” (1969). I combine Cavell’s ideas with Moi’s interpretations of Wittgenstein, “language-games” and judgements from Revolution of the Ordinary (2017). I conduct philosophical investigations of the “criteria of judgement” and of “language games” appearing in the paraphrases, and I investigate the connection between the different kinds of judgement, moral and aesthetical, that appear in the book reviews. In my theoretical and philosophical discussion of judgments, I am also influenced by Mikhail M. Bakhtin’s ideas about ethics and aesthetics from Toward a Philosophy of the Act (1998 [1919/1921]), as well as by Iris Murdoch’s thoughts on ethics from The Sovereignty of Good (1970).
Ordinary Language Philosophy, Literary Criticism, Ethics and Aesthetics