Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Coles, Robert - Sanford Pinsker (essay date Summer 1989)

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Sanford Pinsker (essay date Summer 1989)

SOURCE: "'After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness?': The Rise of Ethical Criticism," in Georgia Review, Vol. XLIII, No. 2, Summer 1989, pp. 395-405.

[In the following essay, Pinsker considers Coles' The Call of Stories in the context of ethical criticism and moral responses to literature.]

On Moral Fiction (1978), John Gardner's idiosyncratic, often downright cranky musing about contemporary fiction was so roundly hooted out of academe's groves that one began to wonder if he had not, in fact, hit a raw nerve. It was not only that his detractors protested far more about the book's self-serving, self-righteous moral posturing than the occasion required, but also that their attacks disguised an equally strong aversion to ethical criticism itself.

Saul Bellow—one of the few writers whom On Moral Fiction did not bash—takes a special pleasure in posing precisely the sort of...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Melvin J. Friedman (review date Fall 1982)
   2. Neil Postman (review date 19 January 1986)
   3. Katherine Paterson (review date 2 February 1986)
   4. Jonathan Kellerman (review date 9 February 1986)
   5. New Yorker (review date 10 February 1986)
   6. John Leo (review date 17 March 1986)
   7. Kenneth L. Woodward (review date 6 September 1987)
   8. Jeff Dietrich (review date 13 September 1987)
   9. Fitzhugh Mullan (review date 8 May 1988)
   10. Helen Bevington (review date 26 February 1989)
   11. Francis X. Rocca (review date March 1989)
   12. Iain Bamforth (review date 7-13 July 1989)
   13. Sanford Pinsker (essay date Summer 1989)
   14. Herbert Mitgang (review date 21 November 1990)
   15. Laura Sessions Stepp (review date 23 December 1990)
   16. The New Yorker (review date 7 January 1991)
   17. Virginia C. Hoch (review date 26 August-2 September 1992)
   18. A. J. S. (review date 1993)
   19. Michelle Huneven (essay date 3 October 1993)
   20. Robert A. Sirico (review date 15 November 1993)
   21. Gail Russell Chaddock (review date 9 December 1993)
   22. Ed Walraven (essay date 1994)
   23. Paulina F. Kernberg (review date October 1994)
   24. Richard Bernstein (review date 27 January 1997)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright