![](https://english.yale.edu/sites/default/files/styles/publication_landing/public/fry_paul_-1996-_a_defense_of_poetry.jpg?itok=A5RH4r6W)
July 1995
978-0804725316
This book argues that literature can be defined―pragmatist and historicist arguments notwithstanding―and that in its definition its unique value can be discovered. The author identifies literature ontologically as a sign of the preconceptual, as the “ostensive moment” that discloses neither the purpose nor the structure of existence but existence itself, revealed in its nonhuman register.