Background
Lyons, John Ormsby was born on September 3, 1927 in Detroit, Michigan, United States. Son of Ward Irving and Margaret Smith (Peters) Lyons.
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book
The Invention of the Self: The Hinge of Consciousness in the Eighteenth Century
( The absence of self in Classical literature and the em...)
The absence of self in Classical literature and the emergence in the eighteenth century of the concept of the unique and individual self asserting its existence and seeking its truth in private experience and feeling is often touched upon in cultural histories but little explained. Seeking the reasons for and the effects of the change of attitude toward one’s concept of one’s self in the new” eighteenth-century attitude toward history, biography, travel literature, pornography, and the novel, Lyons finds, first, that the term self is deceptively vague. It evolved, he notes, to fill the vacuum created by doubt about the existence of the soul. Second, Lyons finds that without a concept of the selfthat ineffable something in a human being that to its inventors and their followers was an abstract of pure and intuited natural lawsthe revolution and romanticism of the modern age would have been very different from what it has been. More importantly, Lyons concludes that the concept led to monumental error and to bitter disappointments rooted, as his illuminating history shows, in the impossibility of defining that which never was.
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John Ormsby Lyons
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Education
Bachelor, Kenyon College, 1951. Master of Science, Columbia University, 1952. Master of Arts, University Florida, 1954.
Doctor of Philosophy, University Florida, 1960.
Career
Instructor, Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H., 1957-1958; instructor, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine., 1958-1960; Professor of English, University of Wisconsin, Madison, since 1960; also director graduate program in English, University of Wisconsin, Madison. Fulbright-Hays lecturer, Baghdad, Iraq, 1964-1965, Teheran, 1970-1972.
Achievements
Works
book
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The Invention of the Self: The Hinge of Consciousness in the Eighteenth Century
( The absence of self in Classical literature and the em...)
- The College Novel in America (A Chicago Classic)
- The Invention of the Self: The Hinge of Consciousness in the Eighteenth Century by Professor John O. Lyons (1978-06-01)
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The Invention of the Self: The Hinge of Consciousness in the Eighteenth Century
Membership
With United States Army, 1946-1948. Member American Studies Association.
Interests
Connections
Married Charmaine Beauvais, May 27, 1956. Children: Beauvais, Philip, Paul, Margaret, Emma.
