ABSTRACT

This chapter reviews the two primary ways in which moral issues pertaining to literature are discussed in Anglophone philosophy of art. The first half of this essay looks at the morally relevant influences that literature is thought to have on its audiences, while the second half considers various positions on the question of whether a literary work’s moral character affects its artistic value. Since several extensive and incisive surveys of this terrain are already available (Carroll 2000; Gaut 2009, chapter 7), this chapter focuses on points of contention and subsequent developments.