Dualisms: The Agons of the Modern World (review)

DUALISMS: THE AGONS OF THE MODERN WORLD, Richard J. Quinones. Toronto and London: University Press, 2007. Pp. 451 + xvi. Cloth, npi. Reviewed by J. Harold Ellens. Ricardo J. Quinones is notable Professor of Comparative Literature Emeritus in Department of English, and Director of 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 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, most profound of all his erudite publications, Dualisms: The Agons of Modern World. is a weighty volume about telling tensions in life and literature that describe 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 highest level and showing formation of ideas in association as a creative exchange. arises with special pertinence in Western literature since Renaissance and Reformation. David M. Hertz of Indiana University observed that This is field of Comparative Literature as it should have been all along, and hopefully as it could be in future (cover). Quinones begins his book with a quote from Martin Luther's Th^ Righteousness of God, that warns us we are all either Esauites of 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 theme and course for this remarkable valuable volume. has Preface, Introduction, five substantial chapters, and an Epilogue. The endpapers include a worthy index of 350 entries, a sturdy bibliography of 360 cited works, and 32 pages of endnotes. The University of Toronto has packaged this fine volume in a most attractive and professional style. 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 farreaching, and quite dramatic. They stand out as major intellectual contests that create modern era, agons of our time (Preface, ix). Quinones consciously inquires into the nature and function of dualism at 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 modern era and its context between radical Protestantism and humanistic philosophy. It is practically inevitable that clash between two such as Luther and Erasmus should have occurred, one requiring such totality of commitment in exercise of conscience, and other engaged in play of consciousness upon world's multiplicity - Matthew Arnold's 'Hebraism' and 'Hellenism' (Preface, xi). To Quinones' pleasant surprise, it seems, dualisms that follow and form content of this book all adhere to same patterns of tension, contrast, and mutuality as that of Erasmus and Luther. …

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