Naomi Lebowitz

Professor Emerita of English and Comparative Literature
Former Hortense and Tobias Lewin Professor in the Humanities
PhD, Washington University
    research interests:
    • 19th- and 20th-century Scandinavian English and American fiction and literary philosophy, in particular the works of: Henry James; William James Dickens; Kierkegaard; Ibsen; and Italo Svevo.
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        Professor Lebowitz studies 19th- and 20th-century Scandinavian English and American fiction and literary philosophy, in particular the works of Henry James, William James Dickens, Kierkegaard, Ibsen, and Italo Svevo.

        Selected Publications

        The Philosophy of Literary Amateurism. Columbia, MO: U of Missouri P, 1994. Return of great masters of fiction to the chosen amateurism of their literary philosophies.

        Ibsen and the Great World. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1990. How Ibsen's irony opens up a path to a spiritual dimension mankind is not yet able to inhabit.

        Kierkegaard: A Life of Allegory. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1985. Analysis of Kierkegaard's use of literary devices to break through speculative philosophy and over-ambitious ethical claims.

        Italo Svevo. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1978. Study of Svevo's anti-hero Zeno in light of Dostoievsky’s belief that fiction is the lie that saves the truth.

        “The World’s Pontoppidan and his 'Lykke Per' [Lucky Per]." Scandinavian Studies (Spring, 2006). The collision the fairy tale and social realism in Nobel prize winner Pontoppidan's novel as influenced by Kierkegaard, Ibsen, and Nietzsche.