Existentialism and Modern Literature PDF Download

Author: Davis Dunbar McElroy
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Existentialism
Languages : en
Pages : 88

View

Book Description

Author: Davis Dunbar McElroy
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1504078896
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 74

View

Book Description
These three essays—originally written in the 1960s as lectures—show how novels, poems, and plays confront thephilosophicalcomplexities of humanity’s existence. Our self-awareness—the very thing that makes us human—also makes us realize our powerlessness and the limitations of our existence. This concept is explored in this thought-provoking guide and provides a jumping off point for this treatise on existentialism and literature. Davis D. McElroy examines how modern art—the unharmonious, corrupt, dismal, and shattering effect of much of humanity’s painting, music, and literature—can be traced to the existentialist view of existence. McElroy uses the works of such American authors as John Steinbeck, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, and William Faulkner—as well of those of Kafka and Ibsen—to show that literature is the work of desperate men, whose anguish and despair have driven them to see further and more clearly than is possible for most, and their warnings must be heeded. To be able to live in the chaos of the modern world, many authors have turned to existentialism as a guide, according to McElroy. Using T. S. Eliot’s The Wasteland and his plays The Confidential Clerk and The Cocktail Party as examples, McElroy posits that these authors are ultimately teaching us that we must learn to live authentically, or we will not live at all; we must choose the good that is in us, or be engulfed in the evils that surround us. This is the simple message which modern writers—as well as the philosophers of existentialism—are trying so desperately to bring to our attention.

Author: Davis Dunbar MacElroy
Publisher: Citadel Press
ISBN: 9780806501581
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

View

Book Description

Author: Davis D. MacElroy
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 58

View

Book Description

Author: L. A. C. Dobrez
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 147251467X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 401

View

Book Description
The book fills a significant gap in modern critical studies. Hitherto, there has been no considered attempt to relate Existentialist thought to contemporary literature – and this is precisely what Dr Dobrez achieves, taking four leading writers and discussing their work in relation to Husserl, Heidegger and Sartre. Readers will find this account enlightening in its discussion of Existentialism itself and its application of Existentialist principles in modern literature. Thus this book will be of great value to students of both contemporary literature and modern philosophy.

Author: Ruby Chatterji
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : American literature
Languages : en
Pages : 192

View

Book Description

Author: Charles Irving Glicksberg
Publisher: University Park, Pa. : Pennsylvania State University Press
ISBN:
Category : Literature, Modern
Languages : en
Pages : 248

View

Book Description
A survey of the development of the theme of the lost and alienated self in modern literature that ranges from Kierkegaard through the nihilistic writing of Ibsen, Strindberg, Pirandello, Gide, and Malraux to the Existentialist hero and the "positive heros" of recent Russian fiction. Included are intensive analyses of Brand, Peer Gynt, The Road to Damascus, the Immoralist, The Alexandria Quartet, Doctor Zhivago, and the principle works of lonesco and Beckett. "Plagued by the widening split in human consciousness, the modern writer is faced with the baffling problem of picturing a self that seems to have lost its reality. Dwelling in a universe that he looks upon as alien and hostile, man today retreats within the fastness of the self, only to discover that he does not know himself." From the beginning, the author carefully and imaginatively traces the development of the theme of the lost and alienated self in modern literature. He demonstrates throughout an ability to present the essences of difficult writers clearly, without oversimplifying. From an opening discussion of Kierkegaard and the problem of the self without God, he moves to explore fully the growing nihilistic trend evidenced in the writings of Ibsen, Strindberg, Pirandello, Gide, and Malraux and culminating in the plays and novels of Ionesco and Beckett. He then turns his attention to the Sartrean man, the Existentialist hero searching to find the ground for a humanistic ethic in an awareness of the absurd. The desire for commitment inherent in this search leads the author to a consideration of the "positive heroes" of recent Russian fiction and the problems of writing under direction from the Ministry of Truth. Commenting on this valuable exercise in comparative literature, the noted critic Ihab Hassan has said, "The author has committed himself to an excellent endeavor." All readers faced with the complex problems presented by modern literature should find this an original and enlightening book.

Author: Jean-Paul Sartre
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 166

View

Book Description

Author: Wesley Barnes
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780812002751
Category : Existentialism
Languages : en
Pages : 266

View

Book Description

Author: M. Roston
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230597173
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 248

View

Book Description
The scientific achievements of the modern world failed to impress the leading writers of this 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 Roston explores the strategies adopted by such mid-century authors as Greene, Salinger, Osborne, Baldwin and others in their attempt to cope with the spiritual vacuity - strategies including the emergence of the anti-hero and of literary existentialism - and offer in the course of the investigation fascinatingly new insights into their work.