Character and Consciousness: George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, E. M. Forster, D. H. Lawrence (Phenomenological, Ecological and Ethical Readings)

Author: 

Tague, Gregory F.

Credentials: 

Ph.D., NYU

This scholarly monograph investigates and discusses the concepts of character and consciousness through an interdisciplinary reading relying primarily on philosophical concepts and discourse providing a genealogy of the notion of character from Victorian novelists to the notion of consciousness in modern writers.

The author applies philosophical approaches(such as the metaphysics of Schopenhauer, the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, and the hermeneutics of Gadamer) to major British authors to examine not one but various levels of consciousness, from bodily, through metaphysical, to ethical. This work is a direct contribution to the nascent field of consciousness studies as it offers a new definition of consciousness for literary criticism in a philosophical and not psychological way. The research will also contribute to the intellectual history of 19th and 20th century English literature.

“ Fine research and worthy of being studied along with Robert Langbaum and Daniel Schneider in the quest for the notion of character not as a given but as a theoretical construct that evolves into the idea of consciousness.”
Professor James Blake, N Y U

Market: 
English language and literature 19th/20th century; intellectual history of the English novel; consciousness studies, Victorian/Edwardian studies, literary criticism
Release Date: 
12/2004
ISBN: 
Cloth: 1-930901-91-7; 978-1930901919
Price: 
$74.95
Trim Size: 
6 x 9
Pages: 
284
Illustrations: 
None
Publisher: 

ACADEMICA PRESS
1727 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Suite 507
Washington, DC 20036