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Journals for work on philosophy and literature?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, an early career reader asks:

Are there any journals for discussions of philosophy and literature (other than … philosophy and literature)? I often enjoy papers that have some substantial discussion of literature more than standard philosophical papers, but I don't have a good sense of how much of a readership there is for such things? Or where I'd send such papers?

Good questions. I initially became interested in philosophy as an undergrad partly as a result of an excellent philosophy and literature course, so I'd be curious to hear what sorts of venues publish this kind of work.

Do any readers have any helpful insights?

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5 responses to “Journals for work on philosophy and literature?”

  1. Filippo Contesi

    The specialist aesthetics journals would seem to me to be the best bet, eg, off the top of my head (among those publishing exclusively in English): British Journal of Aesthetics, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Estetika, Journal of Aesthetic Education, Contemporary Aesthetics, Debates in Aesthetics (if you’re a graduate student)… Lots of other aesthetics journals also publish aesthetics in English some of the time: Itinera, Aesthetica Preprint etc.

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  2. Michel

    Aesthetics journals (or generalist journals friendly to aesthetics) are the ones to seek out. So: the British Journal of Aesthetics and the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism are the two most obvious, but also Estetika, Rivista di Estetica, and Philosophy and Literature (though they’re somewhat eccentric in their preferences). On the generalist side, AJP, PhilStudies, Ergo, JAPA, and Synthese are good options.
    That said, this is assuming you mean (or mean to include) philosophy of literature. If you make the distinction with the more continentally-oriented and literature, then you can try the aesthetics journals (they’re not hostile to continental stuff, but they do tend more towards the analytic) and continentalist venues.

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  3. Chris

    Or, if you mean philosophy in literature, lots of mainstream journals (or specialty ethics journals) will publish articles where you use some literary examples to illustrate or motivate or argue for some ethical claim, for example.

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  4. mossy

    As others have noted, it all depends on what you mean by philosophy and literature. If you mean doing work that is similar to literary interpretation with heavy philosophical reference and influence then you should look at some of the literature theory journals like SubStance, Angelaki, Diacritics, symploke, Mosaic, and Critical Inquiry.

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  5. everwhat

    I took the OP to be asking a different question. They are looking for a journal where a paper that spends a substantial amount of space discussing literature qua literature, while also making some philosophical contribution will be accepted. But they’re not looking for journals that just allow for literary examples, nor are they looking for journals that want philosophy of literature. I don’t think they’d of asked the question if that is what they had in mind.
    Hannah Kim’s recent paper on Eliot’s ‘Burnt Norton’ in Phil Imprint seems to fit the bill of what OP is looking for, and so maybe that’s a place to look. Though in my experience as a junior person, with few fancy connections in the field, who tries to engage substantially with literary works in my writing, I have had little success. I have a hunch that you need to have built up some kind of trust from editors in order for them to allow you to do this kind of thing in their journal. Otherwise, they’re going to wonder why it was submitted to a philosophy journal, and not a journal in literary theory.
    I have a paper right now on a popular philosophical topic that involves a substantial discussion of two literary texts qua literary texts, one that engages with the literary theory on the matter before getting back to my philosophical thesis. And though it’s been beloved by conference participants and those philosophers I’ve reached out to (‘cold-called’) for feedback (not just friends), it’s been desk rejected several times at top generalist journals.
    So I am not sure about the appetite for this kind of work, or how it is supposed to be done in a way that pleases editors.

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