English Language and Literature ETDs
Publication Date
4-25-1973
Abstract
The dissertation presents The Empire City as an outline of what freedom meant in the 1930-1960 era. Within the context of an increasingly deadening Empire, the characters shed their false assumptions and wrong habits, carve out some free space for themselves, and begin to perform free acts.
Chapter one discusses four components of free acts. Chapter two presents three traditions of thought which define Goodman's idea of freedom--Anarchist politics, Gestalt psychology, and Taoist metaphysics. Chapter three is an overview of the novel as a journey towards freedom.
The fourth chapter follows the developing idea of what politics should mean to a creative minority. The fifth chapter examines the idea of good education as a road toward freedom. Chapter six gives a close reading of three scenes in the novel which show characters performing free actions in free space.
An interview with Paul Goodman on The Empire City appears in an appendix. A second appendix presents the major positions of the critics and reviewers who have written on The Empire City, centering on the charge that Goodman's characters are abstractions. A third appendix consists of ten poems the author wrote soon after hearing of Goodman's death.
Degree Name
English
Level of Degree
Doctoral
Department Name
English
First Committee Member (Chair)
Ernest Warnock Tedlock Jr.
Second Committee Member
Lee McKay Johnson
Third Committee Member
Paul Benjamin Davis
Language
English
Document Type
Dissertation
Recommended Citation
Glassheim, Eliot. "The Movement Towards Freedom In Paul Goodman'S The Empire City.." (1973). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/engl_etds/444