Theme: The Object(s) of Literature

What are the object(s) of literature, in both the sense of its materiality and its aims? Is it a bounded textual artifact, a social practice, a mode of attention, or something else entirely? Is there an objective to literature? Given literature's inherent freedom, what could that be? Or perhaps, and following (again) James, what “intensity” can or does (or must) literature claim today if there can be “no intensity at all, and therefore no value, unless there is freedom to feel and say”?

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