Paul Elmer More was one of the leaders of the New Humanism, the most important critical movement in the United States during the first decades of this century. It was a wide-ranging moral approach to literary and cultural criticism that laid the intellectual foundation for American conservatism. Though eclipsed in the realm of critical fashions by more exclusively aesthetic approaches, the moral approach retains its appeal among general readers, and More has remained known and respected among those concerned with literature as an expression of ideas and values, as a criticism of life. Seriously considered for the Nobel Prize on two occasions, More wrote over a dozen volumes of literary criticism, which Robert Spiller, in the Literary History of the United States, calls "the utmost ambitious and often the most penetrating body of judicial literary criticism in our literature." Among those who have praised More's brilliant and comprehensive mind is T. S. Eliot, who in acknowledging his indebtedness to More referred to him as "one of the two wisest men I have known." Focusing on the continuity of More's literary criticism, Stephen L. Tanner has performed the useful service of distilling from More's diverse and prolific literary essays the characteristic principles that determined his literary judgments. Chief among these principles is a concept of dualism that views each individual as being subject to the opposing forces of "passion of the moment and the eternal law above and within." This concept is the anchor point of More's probing critique of the excessive and dehumanizing forms of romanticism, naturalism, humanitarianism, scientism, and rationalism. And it accounts for his forceful advocacy of the "inner check" and the "law of measure.
Stephen J. Smith enters the lively field of editorial-criticism of the Hebrew Psalter or Psalterexegese with this detailed investigation into the final form of Psalms 73-83. In the book, he engages scholarly disagreements over this collection's structure, the degree and nature of its literary unity, and the primary theological message(s) it communicates. Smith argues that the sequence of Psalms 73–82 - and possibly 83 – has a deliberate design that reflects a sustained focus on addressing, and resolving, a multidimensional collision between “faith” (i.e., core Israelite beliefs about God) and “experience” (i.e., the individual/community's lived experience of God) that was precipitated by God's prolonged absence in the Temple's destruction (c. 586/587 BCE). Parting ways with previous scholarship, Smith contends that a recursive organizing principle rooted in biblical parallelism structures the collection. Over the book's nine chapters, he makes the case that the editor(s) grouped its psalms into two major blocks (74-78; 79-82) of two sub-groupings each (74-76, 77-78; 79/82, 80-81) in order to develop a single topic in multiple dimensions: the severe threat that God's prolonged absence in the temple's destruction posed to the ongoing viability of various core Israelite beliefs about God, most fundamentally God's goodness. Smith makes the case that the collection is shaped to resolve this crisis by bolstering the reader's confidence in, and commitment to, these beliefs in the face of their apparent failure.
This comprehensive and exhaustive reference work on the subject of education from the primary grades through higher education combines educational theory with practice, making it a unique contribution to the educational reference market. Issues related to human development and learning are examined by individuals whose specializations are in diverse areas including education, psychology, sociology, philosophy, law, and medicine. The book focuses on important themes in education and human development. Authors consider each entry from the perspective of its social and political conditions as well as historical underpinnings. The book also explores the people whose contributions have played a seminal role in the shaping of educational ideas, institutions, and organizations, and includes entries on these institutions and organizations. This work integrates numerous theoretical frameworks with field based applications from many areas in educational research.
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