Ethics in Creative Writing
Is Ethical Judgment in Creative Writing still Relevant ? In the ninetenth century the discussion of the relation between Morality and Literature occupied a central position in the cultural field. A variety of earnest participants were able and ready to offer practical and theoretical perspectives and to debate the application of literature to life. This cosy relationship was disrupted in Europe by the traumatic experience of the first world war (1914-18). For many critics in the earlier period there was an intersection between social codes, aesthetics and ethical judgments. The project and trials of decadence in the 1890s began the work of critical interrogation by sending up the tired conventions of a smug, hypocritical, bourgeois society. But it was after the war that the cultural plane witnessed the revolutions of modernity. This movement turned art upside down, and led to the expulsion of referentiality in practical criticism. Art became a self suffcient verbal icons. Moreov