Towards Ethics and Humanism: Cross Literary Perspectives

This book on African, American and English literary criticism, intends to sensitize the audience on the importance of renewing with traditional humanistic principles and ethical values which advocate secular emancipation of mankind. The five interdisciplinary essays of the book advocate moral consciousness and humanism as intellectual weapons to achieve the welfare of populations around the world in terms of modern sociopolitical and economic organizations of human communities worldwide. The first essay addresses Togolese sociopolitical challenges toward a democratic government. The second essay denounces hypocrisy and political corruption in Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband. The third essay scrutinizes the effects of intellectual pride of the King and the projectors of Laputa in their effort to create a scientific world which curiously rejects ethical consciousness and traditional moral values. The fourth essay examines slavery in American context as a phenomenon which victimizes both the slave and the slaveholder. The fifth essay explores the way John Steinbeck depicts the destructive impact of American capitalism during the Great Depression.