Category: Calling Citizen Writers and Poets
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Stoom: the universal comedy of James Joyce
Reading Time: 12 minutesThe title Harold Kaplan gives to the first section of his critique of James Joyce is Stoom: the universal comedy of James Joyce. As we have seen with Gustave Flaubert, this brand of comedy is as serious as it gets.
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The Historical Context of Modern Literature 1789-1914
Reading Time: 7 minutesAs I studied James Joyce to prepare for the next chapter of Harold Kaplan’s book, I realized that I need to at least mention the historical context of modern literature. This background is not included in The Passive Voice. Kaplan probably assumed his readers would be familiar with it, but the missing…
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The Spirit of Comedy Without Humor
Reading Time: 8 minutesIn Kaplan’s view, and that of other literary critics cited by him, this work is a ‘special form of dry comedy’. Its effect is the spirit of comedy without humor.
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Modernism’s Contempt for the Human Intellect
Reading Time: 11 minutesThe skeptical mode is the source of modernism’s contempt for the human intellect. Or maybe it’s better to say modernism’s contempt for the human’s ability to know anything. Harold Kaplan1 says we have come to believe this mode is the strongest trait of an enlightened modern consciousness. Metaphysics might seem to be…
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The Crisis of Knowledge
Reading Time: 5 minutesIn this series, I want to share my thoughts about Harold Kaplan’s book, The Passive Voice1. Kaplan deals with several related literary topics, but they all arise from the crisis of knowledge in modern intellectual history. I have some doubts about my part in this endeavor, which I’ll state briefly in this…
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Fascists Like Literary and Historical Fantasy
Reading Time: 5 minutesViewed from the left, Nazi fascism looks like a nightmare that actually came true. So, it may be surprising to hear that the fascist mentality has something in common with a leftist mentality. Take, for example, J. R. R. Tolkien.
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The Poetry of Democracy
Reading Time: 3 minutesHarold Kaplan said ‘humanist aspirations’ are the dominant American intellectual tradition. But an abstract notion of democratic humanism is only part of the story. Kaplan explains democratic humanism in the context of writers of the American classics: Emerson, Thoreau, Cooper, Poe, D. H. Lawrence, Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman, Twain, and Henry James. They…
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American Classics and the Poetry of Democracy
Reading Time: 3 minutesHarold Kaplan said ‘humanist aspirations’ are the dominant American intellectual tradition. But an abstract notion of democratic humanism is only part of the story. Kaplan explains democratic humanism in the context of writers of the American classics: Emerson, Thoreau, Cooper, Poe, D. H. Lawrence, Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman, Twain, and Henry James. They…