THE ETHICAL IN LITERATURE

Abstract

Oscar Wilde claimed that “[t]he sphere of art and the sphere of ethics are absolutely distinct and separate,” while Wittgenstein categorically affirmed that “ethics and aesthetics are one and the same.” Literature and ethics have exhibited strong ties throughout human history and literature is regularly used for moral instruction. Although literature and ethics have different methods, strategies, and goals, they both are part of human lives and the history of literature is also a history of ethical codes as they are inscribed within the wider cultural context.