The Metaphysics of Postmodernism
Although most people do not consciously accept postmodernist doctrines, these doctrines may still reflect the working assumptions that most of us live by but refuse to acknowledge.
Irving Babbitt on Lincoln and Unionism
Babbitt holds up what he calls “our great unionist tradition” as the crucial “offsetting influence” to all the temptations to which democracies are particularly vulnerable.
The Heritage of Lincoln
Like Gamble and Babbitt himself, I think that the Progressives distorted the historical Lincoln. In my view, however, a careful study of the words and deeds of Lincoln reconfirms Lincoln’s moral and intellectual stature.
Joseph Conrad’s Moral Imagination
Literary interpretation is at its maximum free of dogma.
On the Future of the Humanistic Tradition in Literary Criticism
Until recently, the humanistic impulse has been central to literary criticism in the West. The works of twentieth-century American critics…
Irving Babbitt and Cultural Renewal
It is tempting to think of Irving Babbitt as a voice crying in the wilderness, a lonely prophet attempting the…
Lyric Poetry, the Novel, and Revolution: Milan Kundera’s Life is Elsewhere
A careful reading of Kundera’s observations about the novel suggests that they do not quite cross the border to unmeaning, but in any case it is the novels themselves that embody the deeper insight, as the author himself would no doubt cheerfully concede.