Mark Edmundson

"Mark Edmundson finds in Walt Whitman's Song of Myself the evolution of a democratic spirit, for the individual and the nation. Breaking from the past literature he saw as "feudal"-obsessed with the noble and great-Whitman created a story of commonplace egalitarian selfhood, a story he lived as a hospital volunteer during the Civil War"--

In a culture that has become progressively more skeptical and materialistic, the desires of the individual self stand supreme, Mark Edmundson says. We spare little thought for the great ideals that once gave life meaning and worth. Self and Soul is an impassioned effort to defend the values of the Soul. Edmundson guides readers back to the ancient sources of the three great ideals: courage, contemplation, and compassion. Homer's Iliad presents two...

Why write when it sometimes feels that so few people really read--read as if their lives might be changed by what they're reading? Why write, when the world wants to be informed, not enlightened; to be entertained, not inspired? Writing is backbreaking, mindbreaking, lonely work. So why? Because writing, as celebrated professor Mark Edmundson explains, is one of the greatest human goods. Real writing can do what critic R. P. Blackmur said it could:...