Abstract

Raymond Tallis’s literary theory has never been systematically explained and evaluated. This chapter fills this critical gap by: outlining and assessing the validity of Tallis’s critique of the postmodernist view of the nature and operation of language; discussing the substance and accuracy of his account of the causal relationship between poststructuralist thought and anti-realist sentiment; exploring the nature and legitimacy of his claim that only realist fiction can be read “critically in the light of our lives or our knowledge of the world,” as he writes in In Defence of Realism; and by briefly reflecting on his evolving theory of art.