Representation of Selfhood, Dante and Goethe

[timex500]

:( So I have a world literature paper due in a day or so. I'm a really fast at writing papers. But I really have trouble understanding and forming the argument.

Topic: Argument regarding the representation of self hood in Dante, Cervantes, Rousseau, Goethe. I chose Dante, Rousseau and Goethe b/c of the example of self hood in Dante is not flawed in comparison to the Romanticism in Rousseau and Goethe. I don't know how to form an argument out of this.

Maybe you intellectuals could assist a college student in need. :bawling:

[timex500]

It's Dante's Inferno, Rousseau's Confessions and Goethe's Faust.

[PeterL]

I don't know exactly what you are thinking about, but I suspect that it will come down to the definition of "selfhood" and how that would related to the cultures in which each of the authors lived, and how it wold relate to the settings that each created.

[timex500]

I don't understand your last part, "how it would relate to the settings that each created".

I'm trying to develop it as this:

Romanticism's representation of identity is flawed. Due to the valued feeling and emotion which undermines reason. But at the same time, reason is powerless without faith. So in this, Dante's representation of identity combines reason and faith to in turn represent self hood as a fully developed self.

I'm hoping to approach it with, defining "selfhood", romanticism, and dante's representation of selfhood.

[PeterL]

If a character created by a Romantic were set down in the Inferno, how would the character react? And so on. That was what I meant.

That is an interesting set of premises. It would be easy to knock holes in them, but it would also be easy to back them up with the limited set of authors you are planning to use.

[timex500]

Could you perhaps tell me the holes in the argument? Maybe I could strengthen them.

[PeterL]

It may be that the differences that appear in the characters of the different authors were constructed so that the characters would react as the authors wished, and thus demonstrate what the authors wanted to show in their works. I am pretty certain that is the case with Dante and Gothe, but I am not familiar with much of Rousseau's writing.