Confronting / Defining the Self : Formation and Dissolution of the 'i' from La Fayette to Grass

John A McCarthy

ISBN 10: 9004534067 / ISBN 13: 9789004534063

Published by Brill Jun 2024, 2024

About this Item

Neuware - Early 20th-century literary critics Joseph Collins, Hermann Hesse, and Percy Lubbock concluded that the pages of a book present a succession of moments that the reader visualizes and reinterprets. They feared that few would actually commit themselves to memory, and that most were likely to soon disappear. As you turn these pages, you will (re)discover the value of the literary canon through the Self. My objective is to examine how the Self is formed, lost, and regained through creative strategies that confront and define its shapes and distortions on nearly every page of a canonical work. You can consider Confronting / Defining the Self: Formation and Dissolution of the 'I' from La Fayette to Grass as offering an apology for the study of literature and the humanities in an era when technology and commerce dominate our consciousness, drive our daily expectations, and shape our career goals.

Seller Inventory # 9789004534063

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Confronting / Defining the Self : Formation and Dissolution of the 'i' from La Fayette to Grass
• Publisher: Brill Jun 2024
• Publication Date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 9004534067
• ISBN 13: 9789004534063
• Binding: Buch
• Condition: Neu
• Dimensions: 240W x 156H x 22D millimeters 240 millimeters width by 156 millimeters height by 22 millimeters depth
• Weight: 560 grams

About this title

Synopsis

Early 20th-century literary critics Joseph Collins, Hermann Hesse, and Percy Lubbock concluded that the pages of a book present a succession of moments that the reader visualizes and reinterprets. They feared that few would actually commit themselves to memory, and that most were likely to soon disappear. As you turn these pages, you will (re)discover the value of the literary canon through the Self. My objective is to examine how the Self is formed, lost, and regained through creative strategies that confront and define its shapes and distortions on nearly every page of a canonical work. You can consider Confronting / Defining the Self: Formation and Dissolution of the ‘I’ from La Fayette to Grass as offering an apology for the study of literature and the humanities in an era when technology and commerce dominate our consciousness, drive our daily expectations, and shape our career goals.

About the Author

John A. McCarthy was Professor of German & Comparative Literature at Vanderbilt University. His interests ranged from the European Enlightenment, to readership studies, the history of Germanics, Romanticism, the relationship of social history, philosophy, science, and law to literature. He edited Shakespeare as German Author: Reception, Translation Theory, Cultural Transfer (2018) and co-edited Taking Stock – Twenty-Five Years of Comparative Literary Research (2019). John A. McCarthy passed away in August 2022 during the preparation of this manuscript for publication.