Authorship, ethics, and the reader

Relations between literature and ethics are currently the subject of much discussion amongst critics and philosophers alike. Dominic Rainsford furthers this debate by examining ways in which texts may appear to comment on their authors' own ethical status - problematical disclosures which are significant for any reader who wishes to relate literature to moral issues in extra-literary life. He pursues these matters through readings of Blake, Dickens and Joyce, three authors who find vivid ways of casting doubt on their own moral authority, with the result that the reader's perception of the author becomes closely linked to the social ills exposed within his texts. Combining the desire to find ethical significance in literature with a sceptical mode of reading, informed by post-structuralist theory, the book thus develops a type of radical humanism with applications far beyond the three authors with whom it is immediately concerned.