Aristophanes: FroGs, the; Browning, Robert:
“My Last Duchess”; Dickens, Charles: christ-
Mas caroL, a; Dreiser, Theodore: aMerican
traGedy, a; DuBois, W. E. B.: souLs oF bLack
FoLk, the; Eliot, T. S.: waste Land, the; Emer-
son, Ralph Waldo: “Divinity School Address,
The”; Erdrich, Louise: tracks; Euripides:
Medea; Faulkner, William: LiGht in auGust;
sound and the Fury, the; Forster, E. M.: rooM
with a view, a; Jackson, Shirley: “Lottery,
The”; Kingston, Maxine Hong: woMan war-
rior, the; Momaday, N. Scott: house Made oF
dawn; way to rainy Mountain, the; Naipaul,
V. S.: house For Mr. biswas, a; Reed, Ishmael:
MuMbo JuMbo.
FURTHER READING
Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of
Poetry. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press,
1997.
Booth, Wayne C. Critical Understanding: The Powers
and Limits of Pluralism. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1979.
Eliot, T. S. “Tradition and the Individual Talent.” Con-
temporary Literary Criticism. Edited by Robert Con
Davis and Ronald Schleifer. New York: Longman,
1994, 27–33.
Maritain, Jacques. Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry.
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1953.
Perl, Jeffrey M. The Tradition of Return: The Implicit
History of Modern Literature. Princeton, N.J.: Prince-
ton University Press, 1984.
Lylas Rommel
violence
The term violence originates from the Latin vio-
lentia, meaning vehemence, which in turn implies
an intense force. Etymologically, “violence” is akin
to “violate” and thus is suggestive of damage and
destruction that would characterize a violent storm
or a traumatic experience such as rape, terrorism,
or war. In its primary sense, therefore, violence
denotes injury and also violation involving people
or property.
Though the concept of violence has always
intrigued philosophers, psychologists, and literary
artists, it is only in the 20th century that it has
gained currency in most cultural discourses. Per-
haps this is owing to the exponential increase in
the incidence of violence in the modern era, to the
unprecedented carnage the world has witnessed in
the course of the century, and to the emergence of
crusaders of nonviolence such as Mohandas Gandhi
and Martin Luther King, Jr. Beyond defining what
violence is, social thinkers have lately turned their
attention to its moral and cultural justifiability as a
means to achieve personal, social, or political ends.
While the concept of violence itself has under-
gone considerable philosophical analyses since
ancient times, thus far there has been no consensus
about its precise character. Simply put, violence is
the overt physical manifestation of force on indi-
viduals, groups, or nations. Its definition, however,
has been continually evolving with an increasing
philosophical interest that goes beyond its overtly
physical manifestations to more covert psychological
and institutional practices. Broadly speaking, racism,
sexism, economic exploitation, and ethnic and reli-
gious persecution are all possible sources of violence
involving constraints that abuse people psychologi-
cally, if not physically. Philosophers also disagree on
the moral and political justifiability of employing
violence to achieve personal or social ends. While
some thinkers view violence to be inherently wrong
(e.g., murder), others defend it. The philosophical
positions rationalizing violence tend to focus on
ends that outweigh the evils of injury or violation
involved. Conversely, proponents of nonviolence
challenge the claims of advocates of violence, citing
the misery and mayhem it brings about.
Significant philosophical debates on violence
include the French philosopher Georges Sorel’s
Reflections on Violence (1908). In this text, Sorel
worked with Karl Marx’s ideas on the proletariat,
or the working class, and their ability to overthrow
the middle class. By advocating violent general
strikes, Sorel sought to inaugurate a class warfare
against the state and capitalistic industrialists. The
political theorist Hannah Arendt’s On Violence
(1970) is another landmark treatise on 20th-century
apologists for violence from a New Left perspective.
Arendt concedes that violence can be justified only
in defense against perceived threats to life, when it
does not exceed necessity and its ends are patentlyviolence 117