Literary Modernism: The Struggle for Modern History (Audiobook)

"It is no trick to like what you like. It is no trick to understand what you understand." With that pronouncement, Professor Jeffrey Perl invites us to abandon our preconceptions and consider some of the most controversial authors of the 20th century: the Literary Modernists. How were the political extremism and self-destructive choices so many of them made during the war years related to their writing and the personal demons that haunted them? These lectures do not shrink from the challenges imposed by these questions, or by challenging the answers scholars have routinely accepted. Indeed, Professor Perl accepts them with relish. Nor do the lectures shrink from the difficulties of Literary Modernism itself, which can only be appreciated within the wide-ranging context of the philosophy, literature, politics, and morality of its own time. Professor Perl neatly delineates the differences between the two opposing schools of Modernist thinking: Professor Perl debunks many myths about these two opposing schools, especially those that have grown around the politics of these authors. In doing so, he helps us see our own cultural bias toward literature. And he allows us to look more clearly at the literary artists who have contributed to the definition of culture. You’ll see Eliot, Joyce, Pound, Yeats, James, Lawrence, and others spring to life, with all their radical ideas, personal demons, and beliefs about art and morality. Professor Perl explores the political extremism of so many of them, revealing their often destructive choices during World War II. And though his arguments are often complex, the lectures are brilliantly organized and crystal clear.

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