Violence and Modernism - Ibsen, Joyce, and Woolf

Ibsen, Joyce, and Woolf, he argues, each wrestled with the powerful rituals of self-sacrifice that society requires in the modern world--with their strategies and consequences. Using this focus, Johnsen addresses Ibsen's controversial criticism of the democratic majority, Joyce's inflammatory rejection of physical-force nationalism, and Woolf's curious refusal of feminist,anger as kindred responses to modern affirmations of collective violence, not merely paralleling the insights of Frye and Girard but extending and refining them.