Bloomsbury Studies in Philosophy and Poetry – serie

Carefully considering the difference in the philosophical potential of page poetry and performance poetry, Karen Simecek argues that it is only by considering them side by side that the unique cognitive value of each can be realised.Focusing on spoken word poetry reveals the importance of voice and embodied words to the differing epistemic rewards of engaging with contemporary works of poetry in both private reading and live performance. This concept of embodied voice progresses a new line of thinking in the cognitivism debate and unlocks the philosophical value of engaging with poetry. Simecek’s discussion of performed poetry also advances discussions of affect and experience in contemporary analytic aesthetics which raise new insights and connections within the field.The moral significance of the differing effects of poetry finds comprehensive articulation through a rich philosophical analysis of the thoughts and affects which arise in particular contexts. Simecek concludes that when page poetry is treated as paradigmatic, this enables reflection in the singular, whereas taking poetry in live performance as paradigmatic enables reflection on what is shared and shareable with others.

Carefully considering the difference in the philosophical potential of page poetry and performance poetry, Karen Simecek argues that it is only by considering them side by side that the unique cognitive value of each can be realised.Focusing on spoken word poetry reveals the importance of voice and embodied words to the differing epistemic rewards of engaging with contemporary works of poetry in both private reading and live performance. This concept of embodied voice progresses a new line of thinking in the cognitivism debate and unlocks the philosophical value of engaging with poetry. Simecek’s discussion of performed poetry also advances discussions of affect and experience in contemporary analytic aesthetics which raise new insights and connections within the field.The moral significance of the differing effects of poetry finds comprehensive articulation through a rich philosophical analysis of the thoughts and affects which arise in particular contexts. Simecek concludes that when page poetry is treated as paradigmatic, this enables reflection in the singular, whereas taking poetry in live performance as paradigmatic enables reflection on what is shared and shareable with others.

Winner of the 2026 Hugh J. Silverman Book PrizeModern literature is often described in terms of its impersonality. What is the significance of this fact? In Skepticism and Impersonality, V. Joshua Adams follows the history of impersonality in modern poetry from Mallarmé and Eliot through to the present, engaging with work by major poets and critics, but also contemporary philosophers. Rather than seeing impersonality exclusively as a literary historical phenomenon, Adams argues that we should understand it as an attempt to address skeptical problems arising from the limitations of first-person experience. Defending impersonality as a response to skeptical problems, including doubts about the publicity of our experiences, our knowledge of other minds, the capacity of our language to describe the world, the relationship between mind and body, and the fictionality and continuity of our sense of self, Adams analyzes what he calls “experiments in impersonality” as means of working through skeptical doubt. The writers discussed transform this doubt into art, whilst also ironizing it as corrosive and self-defeating. Ultimately this leads Adams to reinterpret literary impersonality as a therapeutic philosophical project.Skepticism and Impersonality promises a new theoretical justification for our practical interest in literary texts, to renovate our conception of how those texts might do philosophical work, and to expand our sense of what a philosophical poem can be.

Winner of the 2026 Hugh J. Silverman Book PrizeModern literature is often described in terms of its impersonality. What is the significance of this fact? In Skepticism and Impersonality, V. Joshua Adams follows the history of impersonality in modern poetry from Mallarmé and Eliot through to the present, engaging with work by major poets and critics, but also contemporary philosophers. Rather than seeing impersonality exclusively as a literary historical phenomenon, Adams argues that we should understand it as an attempt to address skeptical problems arising from the limitations of first-person experience. Defending impersonality as a response to skeptical problems, including doubts about the publicity of our experiences, our knowledge of other minds, the capacity of our language to describe the world, the relationship between mind and body, and the fictionality and continuity of our sense of self, Adams analyzes what he calls “experiments in impersonality” as means of working through skeptical doubt. The writers discussed transform this doubt into art, whilst also ironizing it as corrosive and self-defeating. Ultimately this leads Adams to reinterpret literary impersonality as a therapeutic philosophical project.Skepticism and Impersonality promises a new theoretical justification for our practical interest in literary texts, to renovate our conception of how those texts might do philosophical work, and to expand our sense of what a philosophical poem can be.

Addressing objective and subjective views of the self and the world in philosophy and poetry, this collection brings together a chronology of John Koethe’s thoughts on the connections between the two forms and makes a significant contribution to unsettling the oppositions that separate them. The essays traverse the philosophical conception of the self in modern poetry and locate connections between poets including William Wordsworth, Wallace Stevens, and John Ashbery alongside philosophers including Kant, Schopenhauer, and Wittgenstein. Koethe pays special attention to romantic poetry and notions of the sublime, which he maps onto subjective individual experience and the objective perspective on the natural world. Koethe further explores this theme in a new essay on romanticism and the sublime in relation to the mind-body problem. Using an associative and impressionistic style to write philosophically about poetry, Koethe defends his own approach that such writing cannot and should not aim for the rigor of philosophical argumentation.

Addressing objective and subjective views of the self and the world in philosophy and poetry, this collection brings together a chronology of John Koethe’s thoughts on the connections between the two forms and makes a significant contribution to unsettling the oppositions that separate them. The essays traverse the philosophical conception of the self in modern poetry and locate connections between poets including William Wordsworth, Wallace Stevens, and John Ashbery alongside philosophers including Kant, Schopenhauer, and Wittgenstein. Koethe pays special attention to romantic poetry and notions of the sublime, which he maps onto subjective individual experience and the objective perspective on the natural world. Koethe further explores this theme in a new essay on romanticism and the sublime in relation to the mind-body problem. Using an associative and impressionistic style to write philosophically about poetry, Koethe defends his own approach that such writing cannot and should not aim for the rigor of philosophical argumentation.

Locating poetry in a philosophy of the everyday, Brett Bourbon continues a tradition of attention to logic in everyday utterances through Wittgenstein, Austin, Quine, and Cavell, arguing that poems are events of form, not just collections of words, which shape everyone’s lives. Poems taught in class are formalizations of the everyday poems we live amidst, albeit unknowingly. Bourbon resurrects these poems to construct an anthropology of form that centers everyday poems as events or interruptions within our lives. Expanding our understanding of what a poem is, this book argues that poems be understood as events of form that may depend on words but are not fundamentally constituted by them. This line of thought delves into a poem’s linguistic particularity, to ask what a poem is and how we know.By reclaiming arenas previously ceded to essayists and literary writers, Bourbon reveals the care and attention necessary to uncovering the intimate relationship between poems, life, reading and living. A philosophical meditation on the nature of poetry, but also on the meaning of love and the claim of words upon us, Everyday Poetics situates the importance of everyday poems as events in our lives.

Locating poetry in a philosophy of the everyday, Brett Bourbon continues a tradition of attention to logic in everyday utterances through Wittgenstein, Austin, Quine, and Cavell, arguing that poems are events of form, not just collections of words, which shape everyone’s lives. Poems taught in class are formalizations of the everyday poems we live amidst, albeit unknowingly. Bourbon resurrects these poems to construct an anthropology of form that centers everyday poems as events or interruptions within our lives. Expanding our understanding of what a poem is, this book argues that poems be understood as events of form that may depend on words but are not fundamentally constituted by them. This line of thought delves into a poem’s linguistic particularity, to ask what a poem is and how we know.By reclaiming arenas previously ceded to essayists and literary writers, Bourbon reveals the care and attention necessary to uncovering the intimate relationship between poems, life, reading and living. A philosophical meditation on the nature of poetry, but also on the meaning of love and the claim of words upon us, Everyday Poetics situates the importance of everyday poems as events in our lives.

Innovatively combining philosophical inquiry and aphoristic writing, this study presents a bold new interpretation of philosophical poetics. Exploring fragments, both thematically and formally, Luke Fischer situates the form as uniquely positioned between philosophy and poetry.Like poetry, fragments condense insights into few words, employ striking metaphors that draw intuitive connections, and make space for creative interpretation. Contrasting with the logical linearity of much philosophy, fragments disclose rather than prove, intimate more than argue, suggest a whole without elaborating a system, and emphasize the intuitive act of thinking. Fischer readjusts our understanding of philosophical ideas as they originate in moments of illumination, and reveals the fragment as philosophy in process. In a collection of original fragments and an exploratory essay, Fischer sheds light on the relation between poetry and philosophy, aesthetics and society, art and the environment, and discusses seminal practitioners of the fragmentary form, including Novalis, F. Schlegel, Nietzsche and Heraclitus. Philosophical Fragments as the Poetry of Thinking makes an engaging, nonlinear case for the possibility and significance of a poetic transmutation of philosophy.

Innovatively combining philosophical inquiry and aphoristic writing, this study presents a bold new interpretation of philosophical poetics. Exploring fragments, both thematically and formally, Luke Fischer situates the form as uniquely positioned between philosophy and poetry.Like poetry, fragments condense insights into few words, employ striking metaphors that draw intuitive connections, and make space for creative interpretation. Contrasting with the logical linearity of much philosophy, fragments disclose rather than prove, intimate more than argue, suggest a whole without elaborating a system, and emphasize the intuitive act of thinking. Fischer readjusts our understanding of philosophical ideas as they originate in moments of illumination, and reveals the fragment as philosophy in process. In a collection of original fragments and an exploratory essay, Fischer sheds light on the relation between poetry and philosophy, aesthetics and society, art and the environment, and discusses seminal practitioners of the fragmentary form, including Novalis, F. Schlegel, Nietzsche and Heraclitus. Philosophical Fragments as the Poetry of Thinking makes an engaging, nonlinear case for the possibility and significance of a poetic transmutation of philosophy.

Connecting poetry and philosophy of language, Philip Mills bridges the continental and analytical divide by bringing together the writings of Nietzsche and Wittgenstein. Through an expressivist philosophy of poetry, he argues that we can understand some of the core questions in the philosophy of language.Mills highlights the continuity of poetic language with ordinary language, and positions Nietzsche and Wittgenstein’s thinking as the clearest way to expand the philosophy of poetry. By tracing the expressivist tradition of philosophy of language, this study locates its roots in German Romanticism right through to the work of contemporary expressivists such as Huw Price and Robert Brandom. Where poetry has been difficult to grasp with the traditional philosophical tools used by aestheticians, A Poetic Philosophy of Language operates at the crossroads between philosophy of art and language, proposing a new philosophy of poetry with wide-ranging potentialities.

Connecting poetry and philosophy of language, Philip Mills bridges the continental and analytical divide by bringing together the writings of Nietzsche and Wittgenstein. Through an expressivist philosophy of poetry, he argues that we can understand some of the core questions in the philosophy of language.Mills highlights the continuity of poetic language with ordinary language, and positions Nietzsche and Wittgenstein’s thinking as the clearest way to expand the philosophy of poetry. By tracing the expressivist tradition of philosophy of language, this study locates its roots in German Romanticism right through to the work of contemporary expressivists such as Huw Price and Robert Brandom. Where poetry has been difficult to grasp with the traditional philosophical tools used by aestheticians, A Poetic Philosophy of Language operates at the crossroads between philosophy of art and language, proposing a new philosophy of poetry with wide-ranging potentialities.

Lyra Ekström Lindbäck revisits the crucial distinction between literature and philosophy in Iris Murdoch’s work to make a convincing case for understanding the particularity of literature and her insistence on the separation between the two.Iris Murdoch and the Ancient Quarrel makes a break with existing scholarship on Murdoch’s philosophy and literature that ultimately re-states the philosophical value of literature, alongside literary aspects of philosophy. This book differs by deepening Murdoch's insistence on the differences between the disciplines, providing a consistent and polemical argument for the distinction between literature and philosophy more generally. Engaging thinkers such as Plato, Kant, Hegel, Sartre, Weil, and Cavell, Iris Murdoch and the Ancient Quarrel delves into the aesthetic characteristics that distinguish philosophy and literature. Through a discussion of the illusion of sense, the role of conceptual thinking in literature, the clash between epistemology and fiction, the artifice of tragedy, and the ambiguous morality of artistic inspiration and experience, this study reveals literature as essentially other to philosophy.

Lyra Ekström Lindbäck revisits the crucial distinction between literature and philosophy in Iris Murdoch’s work to make a convincing case for understanding the particularity of literature and her insistence on the separation between the two.Iris Murdoch and the Ancient Quarrel makes a break with existing scholarship on Murdoch’s philosophy and literature that ultimately re-states the philosophical value of literature, alongside literary aspects of philosophy. This book differs by deepening Murdoch's insistence on the differences between the disciplines, providing a consistent and polemical argument for the distinction between literature and philosophy more generally. Engaging thinkers such as Plato, Kant, Hegel, Sartre, Weil, and Cavell, Iris Murdoch and the Ancient Quarrel delves into the aesthetic characteristics that distinguish philosophy and literature. Through a discussion of the illusion of sense, the role of conceptual thinking in literature, the clash between epistemology and fiction, the artifice of tragedy, and the ambiguous morality of artistic inspiration and experience, this study reveals literature as essentially other to philosophy.

In this original study, Rachel Coventry expands Heidegger’s philosophy of art to include his ontological account of poetry and technology. Following Heidegger’s definition of technology as preventing authentic poetic language, alongside his argument that poetry can successfully confront technology, Coventry considers the possibility of great poetry in the digital age.This approach takes us beyond conventional literary criticism, using different case studies from contemporary poetry including eco-poetry, digital poetry and post-internet poetry. Heidegger and Poetry in the Digital Age asks provocative questions to progress the philosophical study of poetry, tracing new lines of thought in Heidegger studies and critical studies of contemporary poetry. Does the digital thwart the aim of eco-poetry? Do poetic movements that use modern technology provide us with a way to overcome the negative effects of technology? What are the ontological consequences of employing new formats for poetry? This book examines these tensions to provide a phenomenological account of digital poetry that grounds poetic metaphor in Heidegger’s metaphysics.

In this original study, Rachel Coventry expands Heidegger’s philosophy of art to include his ontological account of poetry and technology. Following Heidegger’s definition of technology as preventing authentic poetic language, alongside his argument that poetry can successfully confront technology, Coventry considers the possibility of great poetry in the digital age.This approach takes us beyond conventional literary criticism, using different case studies from contemporary poetry including eco-poetry, digital poetry and post-internet poetry. Heidegger and Poetry in the Digital Age asks provocative questions to progress the philosophical study of poetry, tracing new lines of thought in Heidegger studies and critical studies of contemporary poetry. Does the digital thwart the aim of eco-poetry? Do poetic movements that use modern technology provide us with a way to overcome the negative effects of technology? What are the ontological consequences of employing new formats for poetry? This book examines these tensions to provide a phenomenological account of digital poetry that grounds poetic metaphor in Heidegger’s metaphysics.

Blanchot and his writings on three major poets, Mallarmé, Hölderlin, and Char, provide a decisive new point of departure for English language criticism of his philosophical writings on narrative in this study by leading Blanchot scholar, Kevin Hart.Connecting his work to later leading figures of 20th-century French philosophy, including Emmanuel Levinas, Simone Weil, and Jacques Derrida, Hart highlights the importance of Jewish philosophy and political thought to his overall conception of literature. Chapters on community and negation reveal Blanchot’s emphasis on the relationship between narrative and politics over the more commonly connected narrative and aesthetics. By fully discussing Blanchot’s elusive concept of “the Outside” for the first time, this book progresses scholarly understandings of his entire oeuvre further. This central concept engages Franz Rosenzweig’s work on Abrahamic faiths, enabling a reckoning on the role of suffering and literature in the wake of the Shoah, with significant implications for Jewish studies more generally.

Blanchot and his writings on three major poets, Mallarmé, Hölderlin, and Char, provide a decisive new point of departure for English language criticism of his philosophical writings on narrative in this study by leading Blanchot scholar, Kevin Hart.Connecting his work to later leading figures of 20th-century French philosophy, including Emmanuel Levinas, Simone Weil, and Jacques Derrida, Hart highlights the importance of Jewish philosophy and political thought to his overall conception of literature. Chapters on community and negation reveal Blanchot’s emphasis on the relationship between narrative and politics over the more commonly connected narrative and aesthetics. By fully discussing Blanchot’s elusive concept of “the Outside” for the first time, this book progresses scholarly understandings of his entire oeuvre further. This central concept engages Franz Rosenzweig’s work on Abrahamic faiths, enabling a reckoning on the role of suffering and literature in the wake of the Shoah, with significant implications for Jewish studies more generally.

The first book to offer an overview, at once introductory and comprehensive, of the philosophical thought of Owen Barfield, sometimes known as the “first and last Inkling” and as the “British Heidegger.”Beginning by placing Barfield’s early poetics in the context of the critical hurly-burly of modernist London of the 1920s, Owen Barfield’s Poetic Philosophy: Meaning and Imagination shows how Barfield’s subsequent development of a philosophy of history, metaphysics, and ethics culminates in his development of a poetic cosmology. Hipolito situates Barfield’s poetic philosophy in relation to his significant contemporaries (and predecessors) including T.S. Eliot, D.H. Lawrence, I.A. Richards, Jean Paul Sartre, Martin Heidegger and Ernst Cassirer, bringing to light for the first time many important aspects of Barfield’s thought. The book concludes with an analysis of the Burgeon trilogy, in which Barfield recapitulates the themes and arguments of his poetic philosophy by exemplifying them in three genre-defying works of fiction.Structured chronologically and giving a systematic examination of Barfield's thought, Owen Barfield’s Poetic Philosophy paints a much-needed picture of a major thinker and poet, who was entirely engaged with his times and who remains crucially relevant to our own.

The first book to offer an overview, at once introductory and comprehensive, of the philosophical thought of Owen Barfield, sometimes known as the “first and last Inkling” and as the “British Heidegger.”Beginning by placing Barfield’s early poetics in the context of the critical hurly-burly of modernist London of the 1920s, Owen Barfield’s Poetic Philosophy: Meaning and Imagination shows how Barfield’s subsequent development of a philosophy of history, metaphysics, and ethics culminates in his development of a poetic cosmology. Hipolito situates Barfield’s poetic philosophy in relation to his significant contemporaries (and predecessors) including T.S. Eliot, D.H. Lawrence, I.A. Richards, Jean Paul Sartre, Martin Heidegger and Ernst Cassirer, bringing to light for the first time many important aspects of Barfield’s thought. The book concludes with an analysis of the Burgeon trilogy, in which Barfield recapitulates the themes and arguments of his poetic philosophy by exemplifying them in three genre-defying works of fiction.Structured chronologically and giving a systematic examination of Barfield's thought, Owen Barfield’s Poetic Philosophy paints a much-needed picture of a major thinker and poet, who was entirely engaged with his times and who remains crucially relevant to our own.

Deception challenges readers to think about their own lies – from their first lies in childhood to the clever, provocative ones they told just recently. Scouring a number of texts in philosophy, poetics, literature and theory, both western and eastern, the book urges that, at a time when phrases like ‘fake news’ ‘gaslighting’ and ‘false narratives’ have become an intrinsic part of global vocabulary, an interdisciplinary discussion on the intertwined future of the twins ‘lying’ and ‘truth-telling’ is an urgent imperative. Rukmini Bhaya Nair explores the distinction between lies, metaphor and narrative performativity, presenting them as part of an interactive continuum informing how cultures engage with the concept of truth. With an engaging intellectual energy, Nair’s discussion traverses an impressive diversity of writers and thinkers including Paul Grice, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Paul De Man, Noam Chomsky, the Natyashastra of Bharata, Sylvia Plath and Salman Rushdie. She argues that literary texts permit a re-evaluation of truth-telling conventions and offer a space to theorize and understand crises and problems in the world. Augmenting observations on philosophy, fiction, poetry and literary theory with scholarship in cognitive linguistics, the book shows how metaphors, fictions, and lies can function as potent cognitive stimulants.Deception lays the groundwork for a truly inter-disciplinary account of lying as a deep-rooted form of linguistic behavior, which will appeal to anyone interested in research on developmental psychology, philosophy of language, literary and cultural studies, and linguistics.

This is the first book in any language to collect scholarly essays on Kierkegaard’s extraordinary series of Lily Discourses. Long considered “merely” devotional writings, the Lily Discourses constitute a sustained and repeated attempt to respond to the imperative issues in Matthew’s Gospel. Kierkegaard discovers in figures of the lily and the bird a paradoxical obligation to think together, unremittingly, both suffering and joy, the fleeting nature of experience, and the effort to endow this very transience with enduring significance.In Kierkegaard and the Poetry of the Gospel, a diverse group of emerging and established interpreters addresses the religious, literary, and philosophical dimensions of these discourses. In the process, they identify and develop a theory of language—and of exemplarity—crucial to all of Kierkegaard’s writings. To ask what the lily and bird teach is also to ask what it means, or could mean, to be human. This collection is pivotal in registering, clarifying, and celebrating Kierkegaard’s multiple responses to that question suspended at the heart of his Lily Discourses. It is the go-to text for anyone teaching or writing about the Lily Discourses across philosophy, literary studies, and religion.