Fictions of Knowledge: Fact, Evidence, Doubt locates literature at the intersection of areas of thinking focused on the nature, scope and methods of knowledge: philosophy, theology, science and the law. The essays engage with literary texts across a wide range of periods and genres to address the continuities and paradigmatic shifts in certain key epistemological categories. These include questions of probability and certainty, problems of evidence, the uses of experiment, and the poetics and ethics of doubt. Through its interdisciplinary and diachronic explorations, the volume registers the way in which imaginative literature responds to the pressures of particular historical moments, at the same time as it charts a larger history of the relation between literary thinking and epistemic practices in other fields
Acknowledgements -- Notes on Contributors -- Introduction; Y. Batsaki, S. Mukherji€ & J.M. Schramm€ -- Beyond Reasonable Doubt: The Evolution of a Concept; B. Shapiro -- Providence, Experience and Doubt in Medieval England; C. Watkins -- Law, Probability and Character in Shakespeare; L. Hutson -- Trying, Knowing and Believing: Epistemic Plots and the Poetics of Doubt; S. Mukherji -- The Anxiety of Variety: Knowledge and Experience in Montaigne, Burton and Bacon; K. Murphy -- Novel Knowledge: Judgment, Experience, Experiment; J. Bender -- Lost in the Castle of Scepticism: Sceptical Philosophy as Gothic Romance; S. Kareem -- From Alchemy to Experiment: The Political Economy of Experience in William Godwin's St Leon: A Tale of The Sixteenth Century; Y. Batsaki -- Towards a Poetics of (Wrongful) Accusation: Innocence and Working-Class Voice in Mid-Victorian Fiction; J.M. Schramm -- Afterword; M. Wood -- Bibliography -- Index --
Includes bibliographical references and index
Introduction / Yota Batsaki, Subha Mukherji and Jan-Melissa Schramm -- Beyond reasonable doubt: the evolution of a concept / Barbara Shapiro -- Providence, experience and doubt in medieval England / Carl Watkins -- Law, probability and character in Shakespeare / Lorna Hutson -- Trying, knowing and believing: epistemic plots and the poetics of doubt / Subha Mukherji -- The anxiety of variety: knowledge and experience in Montaigne, Burton and Bacon / Kathryn Murphy -- Novel knowledge: judgment, experience, experiment / John Bender -- Lost in the castle of scepticism: sceptical philosophy as gothic romance / Sarah Kareem -- From alchemy to experiment: the political economy of experience in William Godwin's St Leon: a tale of the sixteenth century / Yota Batsaki -- Towards a poetics of (wrongful) accusation: innocence and working-class voice in mid-Victorian fiction / Jan-Melissa Schramm -- Afterword / Michael Wood
