Reflections of a Platonist in an Age of Aquarius

Abstract

Young teachers of literature are as confused as everyone else by the twentieth century. Change hurts. The wave we rode into this era produced some giants of modern thought: Pound, Eliot, and Joyce. Like ours, their graduate papers unraveled or rewove classical mysteries about myth, language, and learning. They thought hard, wrote well, and won fame. What could be simpler to do in a well-defined world where educated people shared a common vocabulary and mutual mind set? These writers became giants because of their ability to handle cultural complexity. I admire that. But I doubt if any of them could have managed the conversation I had yesterday with one of my teenage students. The exchange took place in mythology class and began by resembling that Abbott and Costello routine about base