Authors:
- Examines the rise of modern pessimism and debates surrounding it in nineteenth-century France
- Argues that pessimism provides an understanding of the modern world and an approach to it that can help us live well in it
- Explores a wide range of fiction and non-fiction writers whose approach to pessimism deepens the relationship between philosophy and literature
Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture (PNWC)
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Table of contents (6 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
About this book
This book traces the emergence of modern pessimism in nineteenth-century France and examines its aesthetic, epistemological, ethical, and political implications. It explores how, since pessimism as a worldview is not empirically verifiable, writers on pessimism shift the discussion to verisimilitude, opening up rich territory for cross-fertilization between philosophy and literature. The book traces debates on pessimism in the nineteenth century among French nonfiction writers who either lauded its promotion of compassion or condemned it for being a sick and unliveable attempt at renunciation. It then examines the way novelists and poets take up and transform these questions by portraying characters in lived situations that serve as testing grounds for the merits or limitations of pessimism. The debate on pessimism that emerged in the nineteenth century is still very much with us, and this book offers an interhistorical argument for embracing pessimism as a way of living well in the world, aesthetically, ethically, and politically.
Authors and Affiliations
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University of Vermont, Burlington, USA
Joseph Acquisto
About the author
Joseph Acquisto is a Professor of French at the University of Vermont, USA. His books include Poetry’s Knowing Ignorance (2020), Proust, Music, and Meaning (2017), The Fall Out of Redemption: Writing and Thinking Beyond Salvation in Baudelaire, Cioran, Fondane, Agamben, and Nancy (2015), and French Symbolist Poetry and the Idea of Music (2006).
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Living Well with Pessimism in Nineteenth-Century France
Authors: Joseph Acquisto
Series Title: Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61014-2
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-61013-5Published: 05 February 2021
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-61016-6Published: 05 February 2022
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-61014-2Published: 04 February 2021
Series ISSN: 2634-6494
Series E-ISSN: 2634-6508
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: VII, 304
Topics: Nineteenth-Century Literature, European Literature, Contemporary Literature, Aesthetics