Professor Nie has led the way in developing the field known as ethical criticism. Much of the writing in this newly emerging field has focused on modern works of fiction and on the ethical dimensions and decisions of fictional characters. A reading of innovative American poetry poses a range of interesting questions and challenges for the development of ethical criticism. In this essay, I offer a range of questions that might enlarge and critique the methods and scope of ethical criticism. As one example, I cite the challenges presented by the work and life of George Oppen. More fundamentally, I will problematize or re-locate the ethical dimension—following upon Emerson’s language about spiritual experience—from the secondhand reading of fictional works to a sense of the reader-critic engaged in first-hand ethical experience, choices, and action through a multi-dimensional engagement with innovative poetry. I also present an example of how such ethical criticism might work through the reading of a poem by Barry Signer. In addition, I trace some parallels of the particular ethical epistemology involved in reading and engaging innovative poetry to the considerable ethical and epistemological differences in the contemporaneous writings of Confucius and Lao Tzu, (thus briefly contrasting Confucianism and Daoism and pointing toward the imprecise and enigmatic nature of knowing found in Daoism).

The concept of ethical criticism has always had its roots in ancient Greek tragedy and its Aristotelian interpretation. The tragic plot reveals the ethical choices of the characters and provokes an ethical response on behalf of a listener. The idea that literature is a medium where readers can safely fulfill experiments of thought with human behavior and the consequences of various ethical choices can be deduced from the analysis of Aristotle’s Poetics, which is itself an analysis of Greek tragedy. The ethical cosmos of a tragedy, however, is obviously different from that of historiography. This paper analyzes the pseudo-historiographical rewriting of the Trojan War by the so-called Dictys Cretensis, which became the source of knowledge about the Trojan War for the European tradition for centuries, until the Renaissance. That text elaborates many events for which the main sources are tragedies by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and mostly Euripides. Characters in a tragedy make very difficult decisions and take them seriously. In the Ephemeris, they do not seem to realize moral dilemmas or that they have to choose, but act spontaneously in accordance with their direct interests or desires. Their motives become increasingly mean as the war develops a demoralizing effect on them.

Tom Stoppard’s thirty-first theatrical play, The Hard Problem received its world premiere at the Dorfman Theatre, The National Theatre, on London’s South Bank on January. This is Stoppard’s first play for the theatre since his excursion into what might have been had his family had survived the Second World War and remained in what is now the Czech Republic, Rock ‘n’ Roll. Receiving a hostile critical reception, The Hard Problem has much in common with Stoppard’s concerns in his previous dramatic work: with choice and chance. Alistair Macaulay, writing about Stoppard’s The Invention of Love, astutely observes that “most or all Stoppard plays are about epistemology — about the various ways in which our brains apprehend and address the world, the range of possibilities whereby experience and thought become knowledge.” And the nature of knowledge — what has been lost, forgotten, mistaken — is an abiding theme. Probably the first to appear in print in an academic journal, my account examines the eleven scenes of The Hard Problem, follows closely the evolution of its plot from an ethical critical perspective: the issues of why and how the characters in the play are in the situation in which they find themselves are amongst the elements that are emphasized.

This article starts with a distinction between ethics in philosophy and ethics in literature. There is an opposition between the theoretical discussion of ethical principles in philosophy and a non-propositional representation of ethical issues and problems arising in life. In the central part of the article, texts from world literature are discussed which illustrate various ways of dealing with ethical issues in literature: violence (Homer, Iliad; Shakespeare, Hamlet), loyalty (Homer, Odyssey; Dickens, Pickwick Papers), friendship (Shakespeare, Hamlet; Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn), and love (Jane Austen, Persuasion). These texts furnish ample proof of the capacity of literature for presenting ethical issues. In all the texts discussed, the ethical impact is the result of literary or aesthetical devices. In the last part of the article, an interesting recent development is referred to: the extraordinary power of literature to represent ethical situations, problems, and dilemmas has attracted the interest of philosophers. Some philosophers have directed their scholarly attention to literature, for instance to philosophically minded novelists like J. M. Coetzee. Nussbaum recommends philosophers to put narration in the service of their philosophical work. Gabriel accords cognitive capacity both to philosophy and literature. He speaks of complementarity of cognition in the two areas of writing. There is a rapprochement of philosophy and literature to be observed, particularly in the field of ethics.

Mitzi Myers, commenting on the pedagogical philosophy of Maria Edgeworth, writes that Edgeworth wanted to empower the child, using adult authority to teach children to think for themselves and to reflect on issues. (Myers 133). This philosophy is implied in many of the books discussed in this chapter, where the “adult authority” is the author as well as, on some occasions, adult authority figures within the book, whose story, with the ideology contained therein, is designed to enable and encourage the readers to think for themselves. Perhaps paradoxically, however, the role of the child is also, as Robert Pattison points out, constructed in such a way as to reveal faults in the surrounding world. (Pattison 110) a construction of the child which is not new, echoing as it does Dickenss use of the child as a moral and social way of judging adult actions (Hollindale 100). This article will discuss a range of writing for young Australians which deals with ethical and moral issues as well as consider how we can bring an ethical perspective in our examination of such books.

During the first decade of the 21st century, there appeared a dystopian boom in the English adolescent literature market, where a series of dystopian fiction were published and approvingly accepted by both readers and critics. The dystopian boom conveys a common anxiety over the status quo of contemporary society and a pessimistic prospect of science application in the future. The original purpose of science is to meet the survival and development needs of human beings, but it is now improperly applied and becoming a threat to human civilization. The nightmare caused by severe environmental pollution, destructive nuclear war, and technological autocracy is the inevitable offspring of technology abuse, which is the major theme of contemporary dystopian fiction intended for young adults. With great panic and alarming power, dystopian fiction expresses the anxiety over the ever increasingly pessimistic prospect of science development, and thus warns readers of the social, environmental, ethical, or technological crisis ahead of them. The dystopian nightmare in contemporary adolescent fiction is rich in ethical value in that it helps its readers’ socialization, telling them what the world is like and how they should behave in it. The ethical value of adolescent dystopian fiction lies in its didactic message that helps to promote readers’ level of social cognition and capability of making ethical choices.

The article concentrates on the problem of legitimization of the modern age in the late Victorian literature. The evolution of the idea of modern in the late Victorian time was stimulated by liberal thinking, namely Social Darwinism, new ideas of religion, and Mill’s idea of the liberty of thought and discussion. This revolution in the ways of thinking emphasized the value of transient moments and produced a new type of writing accentuating the true present. On the other side, the new value of modern was seen as a characteristic feature of the national life; as a result, modern acquired great significance, and a new feeling arose — a dynamic and rootless way of being.

Pat Barker, one of the most important contemporary British novelists, has been dedicating herself to the depiction of various kinds of trauma throughout her oeuvre. In her novel Another World, she explores how war-induced trauma is transferred from the older generation (Geordie) to the younger generation (Nick). Through Barker’s narration of the transference of war-induced trauma from one generation to the next, it can be seen that WWI has brought great sufferings to the British people who have been involved with the Great War, and personal trauma engendered by it could lead to communal or collective memory of trauma for the whole nation.

The aesthetic and epistemological implications of time consciousness have been profoundly treated by Samuel Beckett throughout his writing for forty-five years. Time, in Beckett’s two masterpieces Waiting for Godot and Endgame, functions not as an escape from the present by means of the fullness of memory, but as a sad reminder of the past cut off from the present experience. As a reminder of the past, yesterday is the only time process observed to reveal the fullness of the characters’ memory and existence. In Endgame, yesterday is a melancholy which evokes the breakup of a relationship of Nagg and Nell, Hamm and his parents, and Clov and Hamm and their tragic memories they put behind; while in Waiting for Godot yesterday is the merciless and insidious flux of time which uncovers the metamorphosis throughout the limited lifespan of Vladimir and Estragon. On the other hand, though Beckett projects the existence of the characters within the frame of “yesterday,” he puts a few characters to the center, both metaphorically and realistically. Characters’ egocentric depiction is interrelated to modernity and what the two world wars introduced: the individuality and alienation of the characters in the modern community. This paper aims to reveal Beckett’s narration of yesterday as a history narrative and the depiction of egocentric characters to show the challenge for existence in his two magna opera: Endgame and Waiting for Godot.

In Lacanian theory, the Borromean knot is formed by the three linked rings of the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real such that each ring controls and blocks the other two from drifting apart. Later, Lacan introduces the Sinthome as the fourth ring for subject analysis. This paper concentrates on a condition in which the rings fall apart. Terms of the orders RSI, together with the Sinthome, are discussed exemplifying Borges’s Funes, the Memorious, seeing it as a literary representation of the Borromean deknot. The article also considers itself with a discussion about postmodernism as a social and cultural condition for the Borromean knot unmade, unfolded, and unwrapped.

The change in the status of Indian women has been the topic of much analysis and research. The Indian women writers’ endeavour to bring out the changed Indian woman has also been studied at length; however, only a few incidents of revolt cannot be the basis on which a new avatar of the Indian woman can be endorsed. This paper aims to define the new woman who has emerged in Indian society. On the basis of in-depth analysis of the major works of Shashi Deshpande and Manju Kapur, this paper brings out the qualities of the new woman. It argues that certain traits clearly differentiate the new woman from the traditional Indian woman who was the epitome of silence, self-abnegation, and subjugation. The protagonists of Deshpande and Kapur clearly walk a different path as they are not the self-effacing, submissive women who follow patriarchy. They are aware of their needs and are thus self-realized, and they do not conform to the norms, yet they aim to actualize their dreams and aspirations. Hence, the new woman, according to our analysis, is one who is self-realized, is a non-conformist, and who aims for self-actualization.

The Japanese tea ceremony, also known as chado, embodies the values of impermanence, imperfection, and incompleteness. These values are translated into the practices of the tea ceremony in a regulated manner, through the concepts of sukiya, roji, and ichigo ichie. Sukiya, which represents asymmetric characteristics, is seen in the structure of the tea house and utensils; roji is expressed through boundaries for the purpose of signifying differences or creating intimacy; and ichigo ichie encapsulates the entirety of the experience as a single chance in a single meeting to receive a lesson about life. This article aims to show how the Japanese worldview, interpreted through the principles of the tea ceremony, is appropriated in Haruki Murakami’s novel Sputnik Sweetheart (2002). Through a symbolic encounter with the tea ceremony, the concepts of sukiya, roji, and ichigo ichie are employed to analyze the characters in Sputnik Sweetheart. These concepts are appropriated to character study by examining their idiosyncrasies, relationships, and the unique experiences they encounter. In this way, the novel transfers the Japanese tea ceremony and its underlying worldview into literature.

Forum for World Literature Studies (FWLS) was indexed by Thomson Reuters in Web of Science: Emerging Sources Citation Index in 2015. As a new index in the Web of Science^TM Core Collection , Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), expands the citation universe and reflects the growing global body of science and scholarly activity. ESCI complements the highly selective indexes by providing earlier visibility for sources under evaluation as part of SCIE, SSCI, and A&HCI’s rigorous journal selection process. Inclusion in ESCI, provides greater discoverability which leads to measurable citations and more transparency in the selection process.