Dualisms: The Agons of the Modern World (review)

Dualisms: The Agons of the Modern World (review) J. Harold Ellens Ricardo J. Quinones Toronto and London University of Toronto Press , 2007 . 451 pp + xvi, Cloth, npi . Ricardo J. Quinones is the notable Professor of Comparative Literature Emeritus in the Department of English, and Director of the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies at Claremont’s McKenna College. He has previously given us Renaissance Discovery of Time, Cambridge University Press, 1972; Dante Alighieri, Twayne, 1985; Mapping Literary Modernism, Princeton University Press, 1985; Modernism: Challenges and Perspectives, University of Illinois Press, 1986; The Changes of Cain: Violence and the Lost Brother in Cain and Abel Literature, Princeton University Press, 1991; Foundation Sacrifice in Dante’s Comedia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994; Dante Alighieri, Updated Edition, G. K. Hall, 1998; numerous professional journal articles; and substantial reviews. Now he offers us, perhaps, the most profound of all his erudite publications, Dualisms: The Agons of the Modern World. This is a weighty volume about the telling tensions in life and literature that describe the creative contrasts and persistent polarities pervasively present in every aspect of existence. Agon means struggle, contest, playing to win a game and Quinones declaims, as his jacket declares, “Dualism is a motif that runs through literature of all genres and historical contexts, inspiring argumentation at the highest level and showing the formation of ideas in association as a creative exchange. It arises with special pertinence in Western literature since the Renaissance and Reformation.” David M Hertz of Indiana University observed that “This is the field of Comparative Literature as it should have been all along, and hopefully as it could be in the future” (cover). Quinones begins his book with a quote from Martin Luther’s The Righteousness of God, that warns us we are all either Esauites or Jacobites, and as one ideology triumphs, from its very heart will spring up contesting notions; “thus always Cain or Abel, Esau or Jacob.” That aptly sets the theme and course for this remarkably valuable volume. It has a Preface, Introduction, five substantial chapters, and an Epilogue. The endpapers include a worthy index of 350 entries, a sturdy bibliography of the 360 cited works, and 32 pages of endnotes. The University of Toronto has packaged this fine volume in a most attractive and professional style. It is an absolutely lovely book to see, hold, fondle, smell, read, and cherish! How did we do without it for so long? “Presenting a new typology with a distinctive paradigm of development, Dualisms considers four different encounters from four different centuries: Erasmus and Luther, Voltaire and Rousseau, Turgenev and Dostoevsky, and Sartre and Camus. These four dualisms are important for what they are and what they represent; they are historically specific, psychologically far‐reaching, and quite dramatic. They stand out as the major intellectual contests that create the modern era, the agons of our time” (Preface, ix). Quinones consciously inquires into “the nature and function of dualism at the highest level of encounter between pre‐eminent figures,” hoping by this means to initiate a new analysis of modern models for conceptualizing and interpreting life and literature (Preface, x). He starts with Erasmus and Luther because they open the modern era and its contest between radical Protestantism and humanistic philosophy. “It is practically inevitable that the clash between two such as Luther and Erasmus should have occurred, the one requiring such totality of commitment in the exercise of conscience, and the other engaged in the play of consciousness upon the world’s multiplicity—Matthew Arnold’s ‘Hebraism’ and ‘Hellenism’” (Preface, xi). To Quinones’ pleasant surprise, it seems, the dualisms that follow and form the content of this book all adhere to the same patterns of tension, contrast, and mutuality as that of Erasmus and Luther. Consequently “Dualisms has the capacity to universalize and intensify the terms of understanding, to bring such outstanding figures into a larger and ever ongoing, still‐living intellectual conversation” (Preface, xi). Thus has Quinones defined the motive and purpose, as well as set the structure and course of this weighty work. He gives an extended chapter to each of what he calls the “cross‐rivalries”: chapter 1, Erasmus and Luther: First and Foremost...

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