In The Reign of Ideology Goodheart presents a powerful, tenacious critique of the prevailing fixation on ideology in literary theory. Exposing the debilitating effects of much "ideology critique" -which seeks to reveal the effects of power, privilege, and interest underlying critical approaches to works of art- whether practiced by feminists, neo-Marxists, Foucauldians, New Historicists, or post-colonialists, he argues for a new kind of criticism that will reintroduce the pleasures of literature. Goodheart cedes nothing to the alarmist conservative or neo-conservative positions. He...
In The Reign of Ideology Goodheart presents a powerful, tenacious critique of the prevailing fixation on ideology in literary theory. Exposing ...
An assessment of the current state and future of literary studies in the United States, this text challenges the view that literary classics must be relevant to our immediate concerns. It also addresses the question of objectivity in humanistic study.
An assessment of the current state and future of literary studies in the United States, this text challenges the view that literary classics must be r...
"Criticism, as I understand and practice it, is evaluative as well as interpretive," writes Eugene Goodheart. Pieces of Resistance is a collection of Goodheart's essays and reviews written between 1960 and 1985. The book responds to the political, cultural, and literary changes expressed during this period by novelists, critics, and journalists. Goodheart's exemplary figures include Lionel Trilling, Philip Rahv, and V.S. Naipaul: writers he believes share a particular sensitivity to literary and cultural ideologies that distort and diminish our understanding of the world. Goodheart's book is...
"Criticism, as I understand and practice it, is evaluative as well as interpretive," writes Eugene Goodheart. Pieces of Resistance is a collection of ...
An important debate in modern literary criticism concerns the exact relationship between the ancient epic and the novel. Both the epic and the most ambitious modern novels are large-scale attempts to present a comprehensive view of the world through the experience of a representative hero. However, in the older tradition the hero stood for the aspirations and highest ideals of his society. The protagonist of the modern novel is usually at odds with that society, whether as exile, active rebel, or antagonistic critic. In Novel Practices, the distinguished literary scholar Eugene...
An important debate in modern literary criticism concerns the exact relationship between the ancient epic and the novel. Both the epic and the most am...
What it means to be a Jew lies at the very heart of Confessions of a Secular Jew, a provocative memoir and a thoughtful speculation on the nature of Jewish identity and experience in an increasingly secular world. The legacy bequeathed to Eugene Goodheart was a "progressive" secular Yiddish education which identifi ed Jewish struggles against oppression with working class struggles against exploitation. In the vanguard was the Soviet Union. Goodheart's heroes were Moses, Bar Kochbah, Judah Maccabee, Karl Marx and that strange honorary Jew, Joseph Stalin, whose anti-Semitism would later become...
What it means to be a Jew lies at the very heart of Confessions of a Secular Jew, a provocative memoir and a thoughtful speculation on the nature of J...
Complaints about the decline of critical standards in literature and culture in general have been voiced for much of the twentieth century. These have extended from F.R. Leavis's laments for a -lost center of intelligence and urbane spirit, - to current opposition to the predominance of radical critical theory in contemporary literature departments. Humanist criticism, which has as its object the quality of life as well as works of art, may well lack authority in the contemporary world. Even amid the disruptions of the industrial revolution, nineteenth-century humanists such as Matthew...
Complaints about the decline of critical standards in literature and culture in general have been voiced for much of the twentieth century. These ...
Goethe once remarked that -every emancipation of the spirit is pernicious unless there is a corresponding growth of control.- This remark may be taken as a motto for Eugene Goodheart's study of an aspect of the cultural history of the past two hundred years. In separate chapters on Rousseau, Stendhal, Goethe and Carlyle, Dostoevsky, Whitman, Lawrence, and Joyce, Goodheart discovers a community of concern which he calls the cult of the ego. All these writers examined here in one way or another deal with -the emancipation of the spirit- with all its promise and danger. The characteristic...
Goethe once remarked that -every emancipation of the spirit is pernicious unless there is a corresponding growth of control.- This remark may be taken...
The dominant view of D.H. Lawrence's work has long been that of F. R.Leavis, who confined Lawrence within an exclusively ethical and artistictradition. In D.H. Lawrence: The Utopian Vision, Eugene Goodheart widensthe context in which Lawrence should be understood to include Europeanas well as English writers-Blake, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Freud amongothers.
The dominant view of D.H. Lawrence's work has long been that of F. R.Leavis, who confined Lawrence within an exclusively ethical and artistictradition...
In recent decades the humanities have been in thrall to postmodern skepticism, while Darwinists, brimming with confidence in the genuine progress they have made in the sciences of biology and psychology, have set their sights on rescuing the humanities from the ravages of postmodernism. In this volume, Eugene Goodheart attacks the neo-Darwinist approach to the arts and articulates a powerful defense of humanist criticism.
E. O. Wilson, the distinguished Harvard biologist, has spoken of converting philosophy into science, substituting science for religion, and formulating a biological...
In recent decades the humanities have been in thrall to postmodern skepticism, while Darwinists, brimming with confidence in the genuine progress t...
"Criticism, as I understand and practice it, is evaluative as well as interpretive," writes Eugene Goodheart. Pieces of Resistance is a collection of Goodheart's essays and reviews written between 1960 and 1985. The book responds to the political, cultural, and literary changes expressed during this period by novelists, critics, and journalists. Goodheart's exemplary figures include Lionel Trilling, Philip Rahv, and V.S. Naipaul: writers he believes share a particular sensitivity to literary and cultural ideologies that distort and diminish our understanding of the world. Goodheart's book is...
"Criticism, as I understand and practice it, is evaluative as well as interpretive," writes Eugene Goodheart. Pieces of Resistance is a collection of ...
