From sociologists to political theorists and literary critics, psychologists and anthropologists, there has been a rich legacy of perspectives on the process of formation of the modern intellectual, various approaches coming from different fields, but most of the times they are either tributary to a single discipline - focusing for instance on the evolution of consciousness in social thought (Philip Hodgkiss - The Making of the Modern Mind. The Surfacing of Consciousness in Social Thought, 2001), on the social side (Allan Bloom - The Closing of the American Mind, 1987), or they strictly trace the evolution of the intellectual from the perspective of nationalism, racism or sexuality (Ross Posnock - Color & Culture. Black Writers and the Making of the Modern Intellectual, 1998). While the present study aims at analyzing the making of the modern intellectual from a predominantly literary point of view, the intimate relationship between the socio-political world and the literary one is also given ample consideration, the main contribution of the study residing in the practical analysis meant to emphasize the theoretical concepts synthesized in the introductory chapter.

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