Living Well with Pessimism in Nineteenth-Century France

Author:   Joseph Acquisto
Publisher:   Springer Nature Switzerland AG
Edition:   1st ed. 2021
ISBN:  

9783030610166


Pages:   304
Publication Date:   05 February 2022
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   Manufactured on demand   Availability explained
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Living Well with Pessimism in Nineteenth-Century France


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Overview

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.

Full Product Details

Author:   Joseph Acquisto
Publisher:   Springer Nature Switzerland AG
Imprint:   Springer Nature Switzerland AG
Edition:   1st ed. 2021
Weight:   0.414kg
ISBN:  

9783030610166


ISBN 10:   3030610160
Pages:   304
Publication Date:   05 February 2022
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand   Availability explained
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction.- 2. Schopenhauer: Resignation, Compassion, and Narrative.- 3. Debates on Pessimism in Late Nineteenth-Century France.- 4. Pessimism and the Novel: Fiction and the “As-If”.- 5. Pessimism and the Poetic Imagination.- 6. Conclusion: Living Well with Pessimism, Then and Now

Reviews

“This book is an ambitious endeavor, drawing from an extensive range of sources and thinkers. It is well-written and coherent ... . Scholars of literature, philosophy, culture studies, and intellectual history will find this volume inspiring and insightful; moreover, it will appeal to specialists of nineteenth[1]century French literature as well as readers of the history of ideas in general.” (Karen Humphreys, Nineteenth-Century French Studies, ncfs-journal.org, Vol. 52 (3-4), 2024)


Author Information

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). 

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