ABSTRACT
Before trying to sketch how contemporary aesthetics can be relevant for literary studies, it is essential to specify how literary theory is understood here, and what aspect of theory is going to be the target of criticism. At first glance, the juxtaposition of literature with analytic philosophy might look absurd. Interaction between literary studies and various areas of analytic philosophy has, indeed, been rather scant and highly selective. The very idea that analytic philosophy endorses a scientist program and is chiefly preoccupied with issues in logic and in the hard sciences can in no way refer to school of thought in its entirety. Assuming that there is, then, any affinity between Wittgenstein, pragmatism and contemporary analytic aesthetics, it has to be of a more complex, indirect nature. Analytic aesthetics is not an area of inquiry that is entirely separate from considerations in other areas of philosophy. Indeed, some elements of analytic philosophy of language permeate aesthetics.
