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BestsellerE-book
Author Powers, Scott M., author.

Title Confronting evil : the psychology of secularization in modern French literature / Scott M. Powers.

Publication Info. West Lafayette, Indiana : Purdue University Press, 2016.

Item Status

Description 1 online resource.
Physical Medium polychrome
Description text file
Series Purdue studies in Romance literatures ; v. 66
Purdue studies in Romance literatures ; v. 66.
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index.
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.
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.
Local Note eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America
Subject French literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism.
French literature.
Chronological Term 20th century
Subject French literature -- 21st century -- History and criticism.
Chronological Term 21st century
Subject Good and evil in literature.
Good and evil in literature.
Ethics in literature.
Ethics in literature.
Secularization -- France.
Secularization.
France.
Chronological Term 1900-2099
Genre/Form Electronic books.
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Other Form: Print version: 9781557537416 1557537410 (DLC) 2015035809 (OCoLC)914195351
ISBN 9781612494524 (electronic book)
1612494528 (electronic book)
9781557537416
1557537410