HISTORY 125C

MODERN EUROPEAN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY 1870-1970

SUGGESTIONS FOR THE FINAL PAPER

(Due: Wednesday, June 6)
  1. THEATER OF THE ABSURD–in what respects is Beckett's Waiting for Godot an "existentialist" play? You might wish to consider one or more of the following questions: What image of the human condition is implicit in the setting and "action" of the play? How does Beckett's existentialism compare with Sartre's in "Existentialism is a Humanism"? Are Beckett's protagonists guilty of "bad faith"

  2. WAITING–the theme of waiting is central to the poetry of Akhmatova and Brecht, Mandelstam's Hope Against Hope, Camus's "The Guest," Sartre's "The Wall," Beckett's Waiting for Godot, and Silone's Bread and Wine. Why, in the middle of the twentieth century, was this theme so important? Compare any two of these works with particular attention to the theme of waiting.

  3. POETRY–the poets of Central and Eastern Europe (Brecht, Akhmatova, Milosz, Szymborska, and Herbert) have achieved extraordinary popularity in an era when Western European poetry has been relatively quiescent. Choose any two of these poets, and compare their strategies and themes. How do you account for their success? (You might wish to choose one poem by each poet for close analysis.)

  4. STRUCTURALISM–Levi-Strauss and Foucault achieved fame in the sixties in spite of the formidable difficulty of their thought and prose. What kinds of criticisms of Western and modern societies are implicit in their work?

  5. THE INTELLECTUAL HERO–One of the characteristic features of twentieth-century literature is the presence of the intellectual as a protagonist. (Paternak's Dr. Zhivago and Malraux's Man's Fate are famous examples.) In our course, the best example is Silone's Pietro Spina. Why does Silone choose to make an intellectual the focus of his novel? And why is that choice so effective in a novel set in Fascist Italy?

    Please submit your paper to Bruce Thompson in 276 Stevenson or place it in his box in Stevenson Faculty Services. Please keep a copy of your paper. If you would like us to mail your paper to you please include a self-addressed stamped envelope.