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Lawrence
Buell
Introduction
In Pursuit of Ethics
The first and most longstandingof those strandsis the legacy of critical
traditionsthathave dwelled on the moralthematicsand underlyingvalue
commitments of literary texts and their implied authors. David Par-
ker's approachto fiction, for example, seems to a considerableextent a
7
8 In Pursuitof Ethics
II
Notes
My thanksgo to Kriss Basil, James Dawes, Sianne Ngai, and Doris Sommerfor theirpen-
etratingresponses to earlierversions of this essay and to the Centerfor Literaryand Cul-
tural Studies at HarvardUniversity and the Americanist Seminar at the University of
California,Irvine,for the opportunityto presentand discuss some of these ideas.
'Significant single-authorbooks of literarytheory and criticism devoted entirely or pri-
marily to ethics since 1987 include Miller (Ethics and Versions),Booth (Company),Nuss-
baum (Love's Knowledgeand Poetic Justice), Siebers, Harpham(Getting),Parker,Norris,
Newton (NarrativeEthics), and Eaglestone.Also notableis the recentincreasein books not
primarilyaboutethics per se thatinclude ethics in the title or subtitle(e.g., Phelan;Chow).
2Theoriginal(1990) edition of LentricchiaandMcLaughlin'sCriticalTermsfor Literary
Studyhad no entrytitled"Ethics";Harpham'sessay was addedfor the second edition(1995).
3Veynecomments plausibly,"Foucaultjudged it as undesirableas it would be impossi-
ble to resuscitate this ethics; but he considered one of its elements, namely, the idea of a
In Pursuitof Ethics 17
WorksCited
Augst, Thomas."TakingSociety Out of Books: Character,Self-Fashioning,and the Rheto-
ric of MarketCulturein Nineteenth-CenturyAmerica."Diss. HarvardU, 1997.
18 In Pursuitof Ethics