Language, Truth, and Literature: A Defence of Literary Humanism

In Language, Truth, and Literature, Richard Gaskin defends literary humanism on the basis that works of literature refer. His writing is a model of composition, concision, and clarity, and literary humanism is delineated on the first page of the preface: literary works have an objective meaning, aesthetic value and cognitive value are linked, and the aesthetic-cognitive value of a work of literature is in virtue of the work making true statements about the world (viii). This outline is subsequently developed into a definition consisting of six distinct claims, for each of which convincing evidence is provided. The monograph is divided into sixty-four numbered sections and twelve chapters. The first three chapters establish Gaskin’s theory of literature, which is often contrasted with Peter Lamarque and Stein Haugom Olsen’s no-truth theory from Truth, Fiction, and Literature (1994), the fourth defends the theory against objections from analytic philosophy, and the remaining eight against objections from literary theory.