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English literary culture from the death of Thomas Carlyle to the First World War was paradoxical and diverse. In literature it was a time of confusion and a nervous, often frenzied, search for new terms on which the imagination could live. Professor Lester shows that the literary culture of the period moved steadily from a suspicion that the old bases of significant imaginative life were indefensible to a widespread conviction that they had collapsed. His book is not an exercise in literary criticism. Rather, it is an attempt to discover the "geist" of an age, to provide a synthesis for the years 1880-1914. His overriding concern is: “What is the primary force which so unsettles, disperses, and disorients the imaginative experience of this period?”

Originally published in 1968.

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Table of Contents

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  1. Cover
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  1. Title Page, Copyright
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  1. Αcknowledgments
  2. pp. vii-xii
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  1. Contents
  2. p. ix
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  1. Introduction
  2. pp. xiii-xxiii
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  1. Part I: The Challenge
  1. 1. Toward 'Disillusionment
  2. pp. 3-18
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  1. 2. The Challenge
  2. pp. 19-52
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  1. Part II: Response in Three Modes
  1. 3. Responses of the Heart
  2. pp. 55-80
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  1. 4. Responses of the Mind
  2. pp. 81-100
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  1. 5. Responses of the Imagination
  2. pp. 101-124
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  1. Part III: Applications
  1. 6. The Mask
  2. pp. 127-153
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  1. 7. Ecstasy
  2. pp. 154-176
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  1. 8. The Will to Believe: Smergent Existentialism
  2. pp. 177-194
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  1. Afterword on Bibliography
  2. pp. 195-202
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  1. Index
  2. pp. 203-211
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