EN 576 Literary Proponents of Culture in the 19th and 20th Centuries

Working from a standpoint established by Matthew Arnold and Lionel Trilling, this course examines works by six authors. Goethe, Melville, and Joyce demonstrate the synthesizing activity of the creative imagination faithful to myth and literary tradition. Marx, Freud, and Wittgenstein demonstrate the analytical activity of the rational mind bent on changing society, the psyche, or language. (3)