Introduction

Abstract

I suggested in the general Introduction that the newly important role of literature within modernity is that of mediating ontology where religion had previously monopolised this role. Books come to matter intensely to ‘selves’ (and are treated as lifelong sources of guidance, inspiration or provocation) because it is through books that we attempt to work out fundamental questions about who we are and what the significance of life might be. To put it summarily, literature as surrogate theology engages us in deep and complex soul-searching. An important aspect of literature’s cultivation of ‘deep selves’ is its ability to expand our cognitive, emotional and psychological repertoires (see Styler and Martin, below), and, as an important adjunct to this emerging from contemporary criticism and theory, our political and ethical imaginations (see Graham and Arteel). Contemporary theory has frequently exposed the political and ethical assumptions of received humanist tenets, and insisted on rethinking them (if not rejecting them outright). Aspects of conventional Enlightenment humanism, which promote a rational, autonomous, integrated self, are thus questioned in some of the chapters in this section from gender, ecological, interspecies and intersubjective perspectives. In each case, literature is taken to be an ally in estranging us in positive ways in order to reach towards a better, more inclusive and holistic way of being, one which avoids the Scylla of a complacently integrated self and the Charybdis of complete disintegration.