Notebook per
Can Reading Literature Make Us Moral?
Citation (APA): Morson, G. S. (2016). Can Reading Literature Make Us Moral? [Kindle Android version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com
Parte introduttiva
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 2
Can Reading Literature Make Us Moral? By Gary Saul Morson
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 6
Plato thought fiction dangerous and regretted, for instance, the depiction of the gods as given to laughter.
Nota - Posizione 7
PLATONE
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 7
During the Reformation, much Catholic art was destroyed;
Nota - Posizione 7
ICONOCLASTIA
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 7
the Chinese Cultural Revolution sought to rid the world of reactionary artworks; and the Soviets, when they took power, were faced with the choice of banning pre-revolutionary literature or, as they eventually decided, reinterpreting it.
Nota - Posizione 9
CINESI E SOVIETICI
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 27
reading literature will seem like a way of acquiring wisdom; it gets us off our little island in time and place and shows us how our own values might appear to others. We no longer accept our own values as the only possible ones for a decent, intelligent person to hold.
Nota - Posizione 29
ALLARGA GLI ORIZZONTI
Nota - Posizione 29
APERTURA MENTALE
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 29
Some view such broadening as potentially dangerous. The more one regards differing perspectives as necessarily evil or stupid, the less one wants others to practice seeing the world from such perspectives.
Nota - Posizione 31
CHI SI OPPONE?
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 33
Tragedy, for example, was considered pernicious for at least two reasons. First, it contradicted the official optimism of Communist philosophy, which held that it was inevitable that people would reach universal happiness. Second, tragedy affirms that the human mind is inadequate to understand the strange universe, whereas Communist philosophy held that, guided by Marxism-Leninism, people could not only understand the laws of nature and society, but also change them at will.
Nota - Posizione 36
COMUNISTI E LA TRAGEDIA
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 37
Is it morally good or bad for people to adopt— even temporarily— unapproved points of view?
Nota - Posizione 38
x DOMANDA
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 42
Jane Austen invented a technique for allowing us to enter into the process of another person’s thoughts, and in so doing she in effect invented the realist psychological novel.
Nota - Posizione 43
METTERSI NEI PANNI ALTRUI. DENTIFICAZIONE
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 43
The Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin called this technique “double-voiced words.” Here’s how it works: The author paraphrases the sequence of a hero’s or heroine’s thoughts from within. The paraphrase assumes the tone, manner, and typical choice of words of the character, and we hear how she speaks to herself. Thus, when she needs to justify herself to herself, we hear her address an invisible judge. When she wants to do something she feels she shouldn’t, we witness her talking herself into it, banishing contrary arguments, veering away at the first sign she is about to stumble onto a consideration too strong to evade.
Nota - Posizione 47
TECNICA DELLA DOPPIA VOCE
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 49
there is all the difference between simply not thinking of something and avoiding the thought of that thing. That difference is visible only to someone who can follow the process of her thoughts,
Nota - Posizione 51
IDENTIFICAZIONE IMPERFETTA
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 51
Jane Austen, George Eliot, Leo Tolstoy, and Henry James
Nota - Posizione 51
x
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 56
suddenly felt that he ought to be ashamed, and that she ought to be ashamed of the same thing. But what had he to be ashamed of? “What have I to be ashamed of?” she asked in injured surprise… There was nothing. She went over all her Moscow recollections… there was nothing shameful. And for all that, at the same point in her memories the feeling of shame intensified, as though some inner voice, just at the point when she thought of Vronsky, were saying to her, “Warm, very warm, hot.”
Nota - Posizione 59
ANNA DOVREBBE VERGOGNARSI MA NN SI VRRGOGNA. DOPPIA VOCE
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 63
If I quoted this whole passage, almost a page long, it would be evident how we overhear the steps with which Anna tries to banish a truth she knows,
Nota - Posizione 64
BANNARE LA VERITÀ
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 69
Another reason we need double-voicing, rather than stream of consciousness, is that the moral complexity of the sequence of thoughts depends on hearing simultaneously both the character’s thoughts and the perspective of another who might listen in.
Nota - Posizione 71
FLUSSO DI COSCIENZA E DOPPA VOCE
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 74
Readers often feel that Anna Karenina and Lily Bart (in The House of Mirth), for instance, represent values they deplore. And yet those same readers— if I am an example— still feel deep compassion as Anna and Lily descend into suicide.
Nota - Posizione 76
AMARE CHI SI DEPLORA
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 77
to read The Iliad or Paradise Lost is to share, however briefly, an epic perspective on events, as well as to adopt the values taken for granted by ancient Greek or English Renaissance culture. The more alien the culture, the more we are likely to encounter authors or protagonists who do not share our values. If we learn to empathize with them, and regard them as holding their views for motives no less sincere than our own, could we perhaps learn to do the same for people in our own culture, for example, who do not share our political party or social class?
Nota - Posizione 81
CAPIRE IL DIVERSO. MACCHINA DI TURING
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 82
Some literary critics and teachers have tried to “de-literize” literature. They try to remove the essential literary act of experiencing other points of view by treating literature as propaganda that endorses what one already believes, or by only assigning works by approved authors with an approved message
Nota - Posizione 84
DELETTERATURA. ESTRARRE IL MESSAGGIO
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 87
students are bound to wonder why they should put in the hard work to read long books only to learn what they already knew.
Nota - Posizione 88
IL DUBBIO DELLO STUDENTE DI LETTERE
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 92
The more a culture wants to protect its citizens from potentially harmful viewpoints, the more it will de-literize the literary. For totalitarian regimes, intolerant religions, and morally superior social-justice warriors, the way literature can make us moral may seem like a threat to all they hold sacred.
Nota - Posizione 93
PATERNALISMO E DELETTERATURA
