James F. English and Heather Love (eds.), Literary Studies and Human Flourishing, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023, 230 p.

Abstract

Literary Studies and Human Flourishing, edited by James F. English and Heather Love (Oxford University Press, 2023), is the third edited collection in Oxford University Press’s The Humanities and Human Flourishing series. The series also includes volumes on philosophy, history, religious studies, theatre, cinema and media, music, and the visual arts. In the Preface, James O. Pawelski, the general editor of the series and the editor of its concluding volume, which shares the title of the series as a whole, discusses the “transformative power of literature” as it emerges from the studies gathered in this book. He places the entire collective project under the sign of a “eudaimonic turn,” a concept he had already outlined in his 2013 essay “What Is the Eudaimonic Turn?,” included in The Eudaimonic Turn: Well-Being in Literary Studies, edited by James O. Pawelski and D. J. Moores (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press). There, as here, the concept is presented as closely connected to positive psychology, especially to the field developed by Martin Seligman and his research group.