Eugene Goodheart: 8 books

The dominant view of D.H. Lawrence's work has long been that of F. R. Leavis, who confined Lawrence within an exclusively ethical and artistic tradition. In D.H. Lawrence: The Utopian Vision, Eugene Goodheart widens the context in which Lawrence should be understood to include European as well as...

Complaints about the decline of critical standards in literature and culture in general have been voiced for much of the twentieth century. These have extended from F.R. Leavis's laments for a "lost center of intelligence and urbane spirit," to current opposition to the predominance of radical...

In recent decades the humanities have been in thrall to postmodern skepticism, while Darwinists, brimming with confidence in the genuine progress they have made in the sciences of biology and psychology, have set their sights on rescuing the humanities from the ravages of postmodernism. In this volume,...

What it means to be a Jew lies at the very heart of Confessions of a Secular Jew, a provocative memoir and a thoughtful speculation on the nature of Jewish identity and experience in an increasingly secular world. The legacy bequeathed to Eugene Goodheart was a "progressive" secular Yiddish...

In this new collection, Eugene Goodheart, scholar of English literature, essayist, and public intellectual, reveals himself in a way that will interest readers already familiar with his expansive body of work as well as those new to his writing. Rising above the particular, the essays focus on themes...

An important debate in modern literary criticism concerns the exact relationship between the ancient epic and the novel. Both the epic and the most ambitious modern novels are large-scale attempts to present a comprehensive view of the world through the experience of a representative hero. However,...

Politicians and pundits often scorn polarization and compromise—the intransigence of the former and the feebleness of the latter—without suggesting an alternative way. Polarization, when opposing forces are equal or close to equal in strength, leads to stalemate. Compromise threatens to betray...

The US Constitution resists centralizing authority by granting equal power to the three branches of government, as well as the individual states. The risk inherent in the separation of powers is that the absence of a spirit of compromise can lead to the disintegration of the union. Eugene Good heart...