From an Existential Vacuum to a Tragic Optimism: The Search for Meaning and the Presence of God in Modern Literature employs a new theoretical approach to critical analysis: Victor Frankl's logotherapy (from the Greek logos for word or reason and often related to divine wisdom), a unique form of existentialism. On the basis of his observations of the power of human endurance and transcendence - the discovery of meaning even in the midst of harrowing circumstances - Frankl diagnoses the malaise of the current age as an existential vacuum, a sense of meaninglessness. He suggests that a panacea...