The Age of the Crisis of Man : Thought and Fiction in America, 1933-1973 / Mark Greif.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Greif, Mark, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American fiction--20th century--History and criticism.

American fiction.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (449 p.)

Place of Publication:

Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, [2015]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In a midcentury American cultural episode forgotten today, intellectuals of all schools shared a belief that human nature was under threat. The immediate result was a glut of dense, abstract books on the "nature of man." But the dawning "age of the crisis of man," as Mark Greif calls it, was far more than a historical curiosity. In this ambitious intellectual and literary history, Greif recovers this lost line of thought to show how it influenced society, politics, and culture before, during, and long after World War II.During the 1930s and 1940s, fears of the barbarization of humanity energized New York intellectuals, Chicago protoconservatives, European Jewish émigrés, and native-born bohemians to seek "re-enlightenment," a new philosophical account of human nature and history. After the war this effort diffused, leading to a rebirth of modern human rights and a new power for the literary arts.Critics' predictions of a "death of the novel" challenged writers to invest bloodless questions of human nature with flesh and detail. Hemingway, Faulkner, and Richard Wright wrote flawed novels of abstract man. Succeeding them, Ralph Ellison, Saul Bellow, Flannery O'Connor, and Thomas Pynchon constituted a new guard who tested philosophical questions against social realities-race, religious faith, and the rise of technology-that kept difference and diversity alive.By the 1960s, the idea of "universal man" gave way to moral antihumanism, as new sensibilities and social movements transformed what had come before. Greif's reframing of a foundational debate takes us beyond old antagonisms into a new future, and gives a prehistory to the fractures of our own era.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

Part I. Genesis

CHAPTER 1. Introduction

CHAPTER 2. Currents through the War

CHAPTER 3. The End of the War and After

PART II. Transmission

CHAPTER 4. Criticism and the Literary Crisis of Man

PART III. Studies in Fiction

CHAPTER 5. Saul Bellow and Ralph Ellison

CHAPTER 6. Ralph Ellison and Saul Bellow

CHAPTER 7. Flannery O'Connor and Faith

CHAPTER 8. Thomas Pynchon and Technology

PART IV. Transmutation

CHAPTER 9. The Sixties as Big Bang

CHAPTER 10. Universal Philosophy and Antihumanist Theory

CONCLUSION. Moral History and the Twentieth Century

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Pilot project,eBook available to selected US libraries only

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Mai 2019)

ISBN:

9780691173290

069117329X

9781400852109

1400852102

OCLC:

896795156