The Portrayal of Jews in Nineteenth-Century English Literature | Vassillis Lambroupoulos (essay date 1989)
Vassillis Lambroupoulos (essay date 1989)
SOURCE: "Violence and the Liberal Imagination: The Representation of Hellenism in Matthew Arnold," in The Violence of Representation: The Literature and the History of Violence, ed. Nancy Armstrong and Leonard Tennenhouse, Routledge, 1989, pp. 180-93.
[In the following excerpt, Lambroupoulos explains that, in the dialectical scheme of Hellenism and Hebraism, Arnold identifies conduct and authority with Hebraism and culture with Hellenism, and that Arnold argues for the synthesis and balance of these forces in order to preserve the stability of the state.]
IV
For almost three centuries, since it first posited itself as an essence, a problem, and a quest, western thought has conceived of the world in terms of an all-encompassing polarity: the Hebraic vs. the Hellenic. In literature, art, criticism, scholarship, epistemology, and metaphysics, in different forms and manifestations, whenever...
[The entire page is 6710 words long]
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