JAMES KNOWLTON
In I Am A Resident of An Ivory Tower Peter Handke discusses the relationship of literary fiction to the reality it explores and creates. Literary reality, as Handke sees, it, is not the reality of objects, of things, but rather the reality of words, of language…. Cognition must be mediated through the vehicle of language. But language is at the same time a social institution in which the cultural history of its speakers is deeply imbedded. The word 'tree' signifies an object occurring in nature; but at the same time it evokes a whole series of...
Source: Contemporary Literary Criticism, ©1982 Gale Cengage. All Rights Reserved. Full copyright.
(The entire page is 588 words.)
Want to read the whole thing?
Subscribe now to read the rest of this article. Plus, get access to:
- 30,000+ literature study guides
- Critical essays on more than 30,000 works of literature from Salem on Literature (exclusive to eNotes)
- An unparalleled literary criticism section. 40,000 full-length or excerpted essays.
- Content from leading academic publishers, all easily citable with our "Cite this page" button.
- 100% satisfaction guarantee READ MORE
