The Ethics of Modernism: Moral Ideas in Yeats, Eliot, Joyce, Woolf and Beckett
Cambridge University Press, 1/11/2007
EAN 9780521867252, ISBN10: 0521867258
Hardcover, 196 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 1.4 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English
What was the ethical perspective of modernist literature? How did Yeats, Eliot, Joyce, Woolf and Beckett represent ethical issues and develop their moral ideas? Lee Oser argues that thinking about human nature restores a perspective on modernist literature that has been lost. He offers detailed discussions of the relationship between ethics and aesthetics to illuminate close readings of major modernist texts. For Oser, the reception of Aristotle is crucial to the modernist moral project, which he defines as the effort to transform human nature through the use of art. Exploring the origins of that project, its success in modernism, its critical heirs, and its possible future, The Ethics of Modernism brings a fresh perspective on modernist literature and its interaction with ethical strands of philosophy. It offers many new insights to scholars of twentieth-century literature as well as intellectual historians.
Acknowledgements
Introduction
literature and human nature
1. W. B. Yeats
out of nature
2. T. S. Eliot
the modernist Aristotle
3. James Joyce
love among the skeptics
4. Virginia Woolf
Antigone triumphant
5. Samuel Beckett
humanity in ruins
Conclusion
technology and technique
Notes
Index.