Issues of Shame and Guilt in the Modern Novel: Conrad, Ford, Greene, Kafka, Camus, Wilde, Proust, and Mann

This mamuscript addresses the changes in literary depictions of remorse fostered by modernist literature's response to normative ethical standards. Certain twentieth-century authors believed that the High Modern Period demanded a reconsideration of how individuals may hope to achieve the same social responsibility dictated by traditional values in light of a great awareness of fundamental human impulses. These writers attempted to evaluate the principles of their society by reconsidering the emotional conqequences of the decision to bypass these accepted moral codes.