Modern consciousness 'is endowed with a selfreflective dialogue intended to demystify the Ulusory world of the subject and restore meaning to the world of the protagonist' (p. The contrary thesis is tiiat there is a dialectic within modern consciousness, one that is to be described in the modern novel. The argument is that Georg Lukac's interpretation of die modernist novel as depicting a static universe inhabited by solitary human beings who stand in no significant relations to dieir social environment or to odier people is wrong diis interpretation is spoken of as die received Marxist criticism, no mention being made of the debate between Brecht and Lukacs in the 1930s. A reader not already convinced of the power of Marx's lens is not going to be persuaded by the curious argument of die book. For unless one looks through die lens that sees history as the scene of a continuous development generated by a dialectical relation between human subjects and material objects or conditions, one is not apt to see die relation between, for example, the temporal, the eternal, and their synthesis in the moment, between body, soul, and die syntiiesized spirit in Kierkegaard, or the like trio of the instincts ofsex and death and the ego in Freud as exemplifying die dynamic (as opposed to merely logical) development that is history. It is difficult to know in what country the coins may be circulated, but I suspect that Marxist aesthetics would be the land most glad to receive them. Marxist dieory is the die and interpretations of Kierkegaard and Freud, on die one hand, and of selected works by the five modern novelists, on the other, are the coins stamped out by the relentless machine that is Kierkegaard and the Dialectics ofModernism. There is a large cast of characters in this book that includes Kierkegaard, Freud, Marx, Georg Lukacs, Herbert Marcuse, FredricJameson, Knut Hamsun, JamesJoyce, Tom Kristensen, WiUiam Faulkner, Par Lagerkvist, Martin Hansen. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 1985, $32.50.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:ģ72Philosophy and Literature Kierkegaard and the Dialectics ofModernism, byJörgen S.

Knut hamsun glad pdf