Ethics and Aesthetics in European Modernist Literature: From the Sublime to the Uncanny

ISBN-13: 9780521806800 / Angielski / Twarda / 2001 / 306 str.

David R. Ellison

Opis

David Ellison's book is an ambitious presentation of the aesthetic and ethical dimensions of Modernist literature. The author brings together philosophical, theoretical, and literary texts ranging over a century and a half of intellectual history--from Kant and Kierkegaard to Freud and Woolf. His study reveals how the struggle between aesthetic and ethical issues characterizes each of them. He combines the insights of philosophical conceptualization, narratology, and psychoanalytic theory to illuminate the historical passage from the sublime to the uncanny during the 150-year period between 1790-1940.

Recenzje

"...a collection of excellent deconstructive close readings in European philosophy and literaure." The Wordsworth Circle

Spis treści

Preface; Part I. Kant, Romantic Irony, Unheimlichkeit: 1. Border crossings in Kant; 2. Kierkegaard on the economics of living poetically; 3. Freud's 'Das Unheimliche': the intricacies of textual uncanniness; Part II. The Romantic Heritage and Modernist Fiction: 4. Aesthetic redemption: the Thyrsus in Nietzsche, Baudelaire, and Wagner; 5. The 'beautiful soul': Alain-Fournier's Le Grand Meaulnes and the aesthetics of Romanticism; 6. Proust and Kafka: uncanny narrative openings; 7. Textualizing immoralism: Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Gide's L'Immoraliste; 8. Fishing the waters of impersonality: Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse; Epilogue: narrative and music in Kafka and Blanchot: the 'singing' of Josefine; Notes; Index.