The scientific achievements of the modern world failed to impress the leading writers of this century, leaving them instead profoundly disturbed by a sense of lost values and of the insignificance of the individual in a universe seemingly indifferent to human concerns. In The Search for Selfhood in Modern Literature Roston explores the strategies adopted by such mid-century authors as Greene, Salinger, Osborne, Baldwin and others in their attempt to cope with the spiritual vacuity - strategies including the emergence of the anti-hero and of literary existentialism - and offer in the course of the investigation fascinatingly new insights into their work.

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About the author

MURRAY ROSTON is Professor of English at Bar Ilan University, Israel and Adjunct Professor at the University of California. He has published numerous books on aspects of English literature, especially viewed in the context of contemporary modes in painting, architecture, and sculpture.

Bibliographic Information

Book Title: The Search for Selfhood in Modern Literature
Authors: Murray Roston
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230597174
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan London
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts Collection, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-333-76334-6Published: 05 September 2001
Softcover ISBN: 978-1-349-41455-0Published: 05 September 2001
eBook ISBN: 978-0-230-59717-4Published: 05 September 2001
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: VI, 248
Topics: Twentieth-Century Literature, British and Irish Literature

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Table of contents (5 chapters)

Front Matter

The Crisis of Identity

Commissar and Priest

The Adolescent Rebel

Innovative Drama

Terminal

Back Matter

About this book