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The search for selfhood in modern literature / Murray Roston.
Van Pelt Library PS228.S36 R67 2001
Available
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Roston, Murray.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- American literature--20th century--History and criticism.
- American literature.
- Self in literature.
- English literature--20th century--History and criticism.
- English literature.
- Identity (Psychology) in literature.
- Existentialism in literature.
- Spiritual life in literature.
- Individualism in literature.
- Antiheroes in literature.
- Humanism in literature.
- Physical Description:
- vi, 248 pages ; 23 cm
- Place of Publication:
- Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire ; New York : Palgrave, 2001.
- Summary:
- The scientific achievements of the modern world failed to impress the leading writers of the twentieth century, leaving them instead profoundly disturbed by a sense of lost values and of the insignificance of the individual in a universe seemingly indifferent to human concerns. In The Search for Selfhood in Modern Literature Murray Roston explores the various strategies employed by authors such as Greene, Salinger, Osborne, Roth and Baldwin in their attempt to grapple with the negative implications inherent in the new theories, strategies including the emergence of the antihero and of literary existentialism. It is now timely to review their work, to see it in perspective as an attempt to reassert human dignity within a spiritual wasteland. The result is a study that offers some fascinatingly new insights into the literature of the midcentury. This book offers a close analysis of the impact of Darwinism, the effects upon religion of the anthropological work of James Frazer, the psychological theories of Freud and Jung, and the social materialism of Marx, tracing the response of leading writers to these elements and the changes they produced by their writings.
- Contents:
- 1 The Crisis of Identity 1
- 2 Commissar and Priest 50
- 3 The Adolescent Rebel 100
- 4 Innovative Drama 142
- 5 Terminal 181.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 240-244) and index.
- ISBN:
- 0333763343
- OCLC:
- 46777438
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