| Description |
1 online resource |
| Series |
Purdue studies in Romance literatures ; v. 66 |
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Purdue studies in Romance literatures ; v. 66.
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| Contents |
Cover -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Chapter One: Writing against Theodicy: Secularization in Baudelaire's Poetry and Critical Essays -- Chapter Two: The Mourning of God and the Ironies of Secularization in Baudelaire's Le Spleen de Paris -- Chapter Three: Sublimation and Conversion in Zola and Huysmans -- Chapter Four: The Staging of Doubt: Zola and Huysmans on Lourdes -- Chapter Five: Religious and Secular Conversions: Transformations in Céline's Medical Perspective on Evil -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- About the Book -- About the Author |
| Summary |
Confronting Evil: The Psychology of Secularization in Modern French Literature holds that the concept of evil is central to the psychology of secularism. Drawing on notions of secularization as a phenomenon of ambivalence or dualism in which religion continues to exist alongside secularity in exerting influence on modern French thought, author Scott M. Powers enlists psychoanalytic theory on mourning and sublimation, the philosophical concept of the sublime, Charles Taylor's theory of religious and secular "cross-pressures," and William James's psychology of conversion to account for the survival of religious themes in Baudelaire, Zola, Huysmans, and Cľine. For Powers, Baudelaire's prose poems, Zola's experimental novels, and Huysmans's and Cľine's early narratives attempt to account for evil by redefining the traditionally religious concept along secular lines. However, when unmitigated by the mechanisms of irony and sublimation, secular confrontation with the dark and seemingly absurd dimension of man leads modern writers such as Huysmans and Cľine, paradoxically, to embrace a religious or quasi-religious understanding of good and evil. In the end, Powers finds that how authors cope with the reality of suffering and human wickedness has a direct bearing on the ability to sustain a secular vision |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Notes |
Vendor-supplied metadata |
| Subject |
French literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism
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French literature -- 21st century -- History and criticism
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Good and evil in literature
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Ethics in literature.
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Secularization -- France
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LITERARY CRITICISM -- European -- French.
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Ethics in literature
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Good and evil in literature
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French literature
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Secularization
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Das Böse
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Französisch
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Literatur
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Säkularisierung
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France
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| Genre/Form |
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
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| Form |
Electronic book
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| ISBN |
9781612494524 |
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1612494528 |
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