Other Ivory Towers and Literary Counterfactuals

TY - JOUR

T1 - Other Ivory Towers and Literary Counterfactuals

AU - White, John

AU - White, Ann

PY - 2010

Y1 - 2010

N2 - This paper focuses on the ivory tower topos in Hermann Hesse's Das Glasperlenspiel, Hermann Broch's Der Tod des Vergil, and Elias Canetti's Die Blendung. It examines ways in which surrogate ivory towers and counterfactuals occur in fiction set in the past, the present, and the future. The secularization and trivialization of the ivory tower posited in recent research are shown to be less significant than its accommodation to the political and cultural concerns of the twentieth century. By moving beyond earlier religious and didactic models, we show that the ivory tower concept has been constructively re-formulated to relate to modern dilemmas.

AB - This paper focuses on the ivory tower topos in Hermann Hesse's Das Glasperlenspiel, Hermann Broch's Der Tod des Vergil, and Elias Canetti's Die Blendung. It examines ways in which surrogate ivory towers and counterfactuals occur in fiction set in the past, the present, and the future. The secularization and trivialization of the ivory tower posited in recent research are shown to be less significant than its accommodation to the political and cultural concerns of the twentieth century. By moving beyond earlier religious and didactic models, we show that the ivory tower concept has been constructively re-formulated to relate to modern dilemmas.

U2 - 10.1179/095936810X12722739359586

DO - 10.1179/095936810X12722739359586

M3 - Article

VL - 79

SP - 18

EP - 27

JO - Publications of the English Goethe Society

JF - Publications of the English Goethe Society

IS - 1

ER -