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Myths of Modern Individualism
Faust, Don Quixote, Don Juan, Robinson Crusoe
Individualism as explored in four modern novels: Faust, Don Quixote, Don Juan, and Robinson Crusoe.
Ian Watt (Author)
9780521480116, Cambridge University Press
Hardback, published 23 February 1996
310 pages, 4 b/w illus.
23.6 x 16 x 2.8 cm, 0.599 kg
'Watt has dug deep and come up with indispensable revelations about where we come from and where we are now as we 'individuals' grapple with our inescapable complaints about, yet need for, 'society'.' The Boston Book Review
In this volume, Ian Watt examines the myths of Faust, Don Quixote, Don Juan and Robinson Crusoe, as the distinctive products of modern society. He traces the way the original versions of Faust, Don Quixote and Don Juan - all written within a forty-year period during the Counter Reformation - presented unflattering portrayals of the three figures, while the Romantic period two centuries later recreated them as admirable and even heroic. The twentieth century retained their prestige as mythical figures, but with a new note of criticism. Robinson Crusoe came much later than the other three, but his fate can be seen as representative of the new religious, economic and social attitudes which succeeded the Counter-Reformation. The four figures help to reveal problems of individualism in the modern period: solitude, narcissism, and the claims of the self versus the claims of society. They all pursue their own view of what they should be, raising strong questions about their heroes' character and the societies whose ideals they reflect.
Introduction
Part I. Three Renaissance Myths: 1. From George Faust to Faustbuch
2. The tragicall history of the life and death of Doctor Faustus
3. Don Quixote of La Mancha
4. El burlador and Don Juan
5. Renaissance individualism and the Counter-Reformation
Part II. From Puritan Ethic To Romantic Apotheosis: 6. Robinson Crusoe
7. Crusoe, ideology, and theory
8. Romantic apotheosis of Renaissance myths
9. Myth and individualism
Part III. Coda: Thoughts On The Twentieth Century: I. Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus
II. Michel Tournier's Friday
III. Some notes on the present
Appendix.
Subject Areas: Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD]