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Download Preface (1236 KB)

Download Abbreviations of Classical Works.pdf (142 KB)

Download Introduction (4256 KB)

Download Chapter 1: Greek Gods, daimon, and Socrates' daimonion (10303 KB)

Download Chapter 2: Hebrew Angels, satan, and Philo's logoi (8346 KB)

Download Chapter 3: The Eighteenth-Century Introjection of Genius (8267 KB)

Download Chapter 4: The Transcendence of Monologue (11961 KB)

Download Chapter 5: Pre-Shakespearean and Shakespearean Soliloquies (8985 KB)

Download Chapter 6: Coleridge's Conversational Pretense (8237 KB)

Download Chapter 7: Poe's Narrative Monologues (6670 KB)

Download Chapter 8: The Genius of Internal Monologue (8953 KB)

Download Conclusion (2616 KB)

Download Selected Bibliography (4062 KB)

Download Index (2699 KB)

Description

"Genius is the intellectual obsession of our time," Ken Frieden writes, "and monologue is one symptom of the disorder." From ancient, spiritual conceptions of genius to modern notions of the extraordinary mind, Frieden traces associated philosophic and literary expressions of inspiration and individuality.

Frieden juxtaposes the evolving forms of genius with traditions of monologue in pre-Shakespearean and Shakespearean drama, Romantic poetry, and nineteenthand twentieth-century fiction. He delineates the linguistic mechanisms that have shaped the dominant ideology of genius, showing that while literary monologues typically break the conventions of dialogue, aethetics ultimately identifies originality with deviance and madness. The successive guises of genius have gradually displaced divine intervention, and language has usurped the role of external inspiration.

Ken Frieden's provocative and wideranging study revises some traditional assumptions of literary theory and intellectual history and sheds light on the fictions of divinity and subjectivity in literature. It will interest scholars and students of literary theory as well as comparativists, intellectual and literary historians, and philosophers.

ISBN

0801418046

Publication Date

1985

Publisher

Cornell University Press

City

Ithaca and London

Keywords

Philosophy of genius, literature of monologue

Disciplines

Cultural History | History of Religion | Other Philosophy

Comments

The full text has the entire content, and the individual files under it are chapters from the books.