Violence and Modernism - Ibsen, Joyce, and Woolf

Employing Northrop Frye and Rene Girard as his theoretical foundation, Johnsen reinterprets the works of three canonical modernists--Ibsen, Joyce, and Woolf--to argue for their commitment to analyzing collective violence as a defining motive in literary modernism. Johnsen shows how Frye's vision of a movement from mythic to ironic heroes parallels Girard's view of a society increasingly demythologized, and increasingly concerned with scapegoats and victims. He points to important similarities between these theoretical visions and a growing concern for weaker subjects across literary history, especially with the move into the modern period.