ABSTRACT
Within the field of European literature, it would be no exaggeration to suggest that the twentieth century begins with the modernist pantheon of the late 1800s (Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine all deserve mentioning). Philosophy follows in due course, and asks how modernist literature, with its stylistic earnest, its attacks on bourgeois morality, and its relentless will to transcend existing literary conventions can yield a unique perspective on modern life. In seeking to provide a roadmap to twentieth-century philosophy of literature in Europe, this chapter hones in on three different theoretical paradigms and their responses to new literary forms: Marxism and critical theory (Section II), phenomenology and hermeneutics (Section III), and the synthesis of political and phenomenological thought in existentialist theory of literature (Section IV). European twentieth-century philosophy of literature is, admittedly, much richer than these three paradigms or theory formations. It includes structuralism, psychoanalytic theory, post-structuralism, post-colonialist theories, and so forth. Yet these developments are not, typically, taught in anglophone philosophy departments. Critical theory, phenomenology, and existentialism, by contrast, hold an uncontested place within aesthetics and twentieth-century European philosophy classes. Further, the development of post-structuralism and other, more recent contributions in Continental philosophy can only be understood against the background of the central philosophical positions of the twentieth century. It will be my suggestion that these positions not only respond to the new forms of modernism, but that they also, in an important sense, shape their philosophical form and direction in and through the encounter with modernist art.
