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The Opposing Self: Nine Essays in Criticism

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This book marks the height of Mr. Trilling's mature and distinguished powers. He is able to make connections between apparently unconnected poles that set off lively sparks in the delighted reader's mind.

In contrast to The Liberal Imaginations, its highly regarded and widely read predecessors, The Opposing Self is more literally, less polemical, in tone. There is still a sharp awareness of society, but the author is more concerned here with a single aspect of life—the problem of the self. He has gone back through literature to show how it suggests ways of being, how out attitude toward the self has developed, and the various faces under which it appears.

Whether he is comparing Wordsworth's quietism with that of the old rabbis, or being ironic about Jane Austin's sense of irony, or commenting on the conformity if Flaubert's amiable bachelors, Bouvard and Pécuchet; whether he is concerned with Howells as a polarizing force in our social thinking, or with Tolstoi's Anna Karenina as a work of life rather than of art; whether he deals with the truths of Orwell or James or Dickens or the self-revelations of Keats, he is constantly shedding light on the values in literature that escape the ordinary reader, and that enrich it so greatly when they are pointed out to him.

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Series Title

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Call Number

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Publisher

New York : The Viking Press., 1955

Collation

248 hal., 14.75x21.65cm

Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

B004BJ7R8O

Classification

NONE

Content Type

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Media Type

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Carrier Type

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Edition

The Viking Press

Subject(s)

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Specific Detail Info

ASIN: B004BJ7R8O

Statement of Responsibility

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