ABSTRACT
The question of ethics, of what constitutes “good” behaviour and on what philosophical grounds we justify such predications, has always troubled human thought. Since the publication of New Literary History’s pioneering special issue “Literature and/as Moral Philosophy” (1983), however, there has been an increased engagement with this debate across the academic disciplines. Whilst a range of motivating factors has been suggested, this “turn to ethics,” most evident in philosophy, political science and literary studies marks, according to Lawrence Buell, ‘a groundswell of still uncertain magnitude’ (Buell 2000, 1). Indeed, Michael Eskin has proposed that these renewed engagements have ‘unquestionably consolidated into a burgeoning subdiscipline’ (Eskin 2004, 557).
