The Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and SocietyViking Press, 1950 - 303 páginas "The Liberal Imagination" is one of the most admired and influential works of criticism of the last century, a work that is not only a masterpiece of literary criticism but an important statement about politics and society. Published in 1950, one of the chillier moments of the Cold War, Trilling's essays examine the promise-and limits-of liberalism, challenging the complacency of a naive liberal belief in rationality, progress, and the panaceas of economics and other social sciences, and asserting in their stead the irreducible complexity of human motivation and the tragic inevitability of tragedy. Only the imagination, Trilling argues, can give us access and insight into these realms and only the imagination can ground a reflective and considered, rather than programmatic and dogmatic, liberalism. Writing with acute intelligence about classics like "Huckleberry Finn" and the novels of Henry James and F. Scott Fitzgerald, but also on such varied matters as the Kinsey Report and money in the American imagination, Trilling presents a model of the critic as both part of and apart from his society, a defender of the reflective life that, in our ever more rationalized world, seems ever more necessary-and ever more remote. |
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Términos y frases comunes
admirable aesthetic American anarchism Anderson artist aware believe called conceived connection conscious course criticism culture D. H. Lawrence deal dream Dreiser effect element Eliot emotions ence essay existence expression fact fantasy feeling Fitzgerald Freud Freudian Gatsby genius give glory Henry James hero Huckleberry Finn human Hyacinth ideal ideas illusion imagination implies intellectual intention interest James's kind Kipling less liberal literary literature Mark Twain matter means ment mental merely mind modern moral moral realism nature neurosis neurotic never notion novel novelist Parrington Partisan Review passion perhaps poem poet poetic poetry political Princess Casamassima prose psychoanalysis question reader reality Report response romance seems sense sexual Shakespeare Sherwood Anderson social society speaks stanza suggest T. S. Eliot Tacitus tells theory thing thought tion tradition truth unconscious unconscious mind understand virtue wholly word Wordsworth writers
Referencias a este libro
Talking Proper: The Rise of Accent as Social Symbol Lynda Mugglestone Sin vista previa disponible - 2007 |