Alienation of intellectuals in Saul Bellow's later novels

This dissertation examines how and why the intellectuals in the European humanistic tradition are to be ostracized from the imaginary center in modern American society in Saul Bellow's four novels: Herzog, Mr. Sammler's Planet, Humboldt's Gift, and The Dean's December. The protagonists in the novels are intellectuals trained in European liberal education, namely, in humanities. Bellow supposes that they lead modern American society, predicting its future, providing humanistic values for Americans. By "culture," he refers only to what those intellectuals are concerned about, presenting it as "high culture," while denigrating other aspects of culture as "low culture" or "mass culture." His attitudes towards the intellectuals and their humanistic culture are challenged within American society as well as in his novels. He is considered to be conservative, even if he was progressive in his youth. I investigate why such a dramatic change happened, and to what extent the transition of social values was possible.; The Bellovian paradigm is unrealizable in a society where democracy and capitalism are dominant ideologies. Although the debate on ideology was believed to have ended in America several decades before, Bellow demonstrates in his works that the battle hasn't ended. These two ideologies have replaced the old European humanistic tradition. Consequently the new ideologies have produced specialists or experts, and vulgar masses, not the traditional intellectuals. I introduce at the conclusion Foucault's conception of "episteme" to explain the social and historical fracture from which Bellow's intellectual characters suffer. The intellectuals in European liberal education have faded away in the midst of history, regardless of the efforts painstakingly made by a small group of conservatives, including Bellow.