LEADER 03509cam a2200349 i 4500001 247880 005 20240621225527.0 008 151214s2015 nju b 001 0 eng 010 2014007905 020 9780691146393 |q(hardback ; |qacid-free paper) 020 069114639X |q(hardback ; |qacid-free paper) 024 8 40024490337 035 (OCoLC)ocn877364319 035 247880 042 pcc 049 LHMA 040 DLC |beng |erda |cDLC |dYDXCP |dBTCTA |dOCLCF |dERASA |dCDX |dCUV |dYUS |dCOO |dBDX |dZLM |dJHE |dZCU |dCHVBK |dOCLCQ |dLHM 050 00 PS379 |b.G73 2015 100 1 Greif, Mark, |d1975- 245 14 The age of the crisis of man : |bthought and fiction in America, 1933-1973 / |cMark Greif. 264 1 Princeton : |bPrinceton University Press, |c[2015] 300 xiii, 434 pages ; |c25 cm 336 text |btxt |2rdacontent 337 unmediated |bn |2rdamedia 338 volume |bnc |2rdacarrier 504 Includes bibliographical references (pages 331-400) and index. 505 0 Introduction: the "crisis of man" as obscurity and re-enlightenment -- Currents through the War -- The end of the War and after -- Transmission -- Criticism and the literary crisis of man -- Studies in fiction -- Saul Bellow and Ralph Ellison: man and history, the questions -- Ralph Ellison and Saul Bellow: history and man, the answers -- Flannery O'Connor and faith -- Thomas Pynchon and technology -- Transmutation -- The Sixties as big bang -- Universal philosophy and antihumanist theory -- Conclusion: moral history and the twentieth century. 520 "In a midcentury American cultural episode forgotten today, intellectuals of all schools shared a belief that human nature was under threat. The immediate result was a glut of dense, abstract books on the "nature of man." But the dawning "age of the crisis of man," as Mark Greif calls it, was far more than a historical curiosity. In this ambitious intellectual and literary history, Greif recovers this lost line of thought to show how it influenced society, politics, and culture before, during, and long after World War II. During the 1930s and 1940s, fears of the barbarization of humanity energized New York intellectuals, Chicago protoconservatives, European Jewish émigrés, and native-born bohemians to seek "re-enlightenment," a new philosophical account of human nature and history. After the war this effort diffused, leading to a rebirth of modern human rights and a new power for the literary arts. Critics' predictions of a "death of the novel" challenged writers to invest bloodless questions of human nature with flesh and detail. Hemingway, Faulkner, and Richard Wright wrote flawed novels of abstract man. Succeeding them, Ralph Ellison, Saul Bellow, Flannery O'Connor, and Thomas Pynchon constituted a new guard who tested philosophical questions against social realities--race, religious faith, and the rise of technology--that kept difference and diversity alive. By the 1960s, the idea of "universal man" gave way to moral antihumanism, as new sensibilities and social movements transformed what had come before. Greif's reframing of a foundational debate takes us beyond old antagonisms into a new future, and gives a prehistory to the fractures of our own era."--Publisher's description. 591 Record updated by Marcive processing 21 June 2024 650 0 American fiction |y20th century |xHistory and criticism. 648 7 1900 - 1999 |2fast 852 0 |bstacks |hPS379 |i.G73 2015