| Confronting Evil: The Psychology of Secularization in Modern French Literature Contributor(s): Powers, Scott M. (Author) |
|
 |
ISBN: 1557537410 ISBN-13: 9781557537416 Publisher: Purdue University Press OUR PRICE: $44.55 Product Type: Paperback Published: April 2016 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | European - French - Literary Criticism | Subjects & Themes - Religion - Literary Criticism | Semiotics & Theory |
| Dewey: 840.935 |
| LCCN: 2015035809 |
| Series: Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures |
| Physical Information: 0.8" H x 5.9" W x 8.9" (0.95 lbs) 179 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - French |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: 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 C line. For Powers, Baudelaire's prose poems, Zola's experimental novels, and Huysmans's and C line'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 C line, 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. |