Kendall L. Walton: “Poets as Thoughtwriters: Music Without Personae”

Abstract: It may seem obvious that all or almost all works of literary fiction have narrators, characters who, in the fiction, utter or write the words of the text “seriously,” thereby reporting the events of the story. The lecture explores a very different way of understanding literary works, one applicable especially to poetry. Music can be understood in a similar manner, and doing so nicely explains several important characteristics of listeners’ experiences.

Kendall L. Walton ist Charles L. Stevenson Collegiate Professor of Philosophy und Professor der School of Art and Design an der University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Er ist Fellow der American Academy of Arts and Sciences und ehem. Präsident der American Society for Aesthetics. Seine bahnbrechende Untersuchung „Mimesis as Make-Believe. On the Foundations of the Representational Arts“ (Harvard University Press, 1990) gilt als eine der wichtigsten und meistdiskutierten Veröffentlichungen der philosophischen Ästhetik des 20. Jahrhunderts.