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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 Céline. For Powers, Baudelaire's prose poems, Zola's experimental novels, and Huysmans's and Céline'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 Céline, 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.
ISBN
9781612494524
Publication Date
Spring 4-15-2016
Publisher
Purdue University Press
City
West Lafayette
Keywords
Charles Taylor, William James, Baudelaire, Zola, Huysmans, Céline, good and evil, French literature, secularization, religion, mourning, sublimation
Disciplines
French and Francophone Language and Literature | French and Francophone Literature
Recommended Citation
Powers, Scott M., "Confronting Evil: The Psychology of Secularization in Modern French Literature" (2016). Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures. 18.
https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/psrl/18
Comments
Open access publication of this title is supported by Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies.