Smith Nietzsche and Modernism

Nihilism and Suffering in Lawrence, Kafka and Beckett
1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-3-319-75535-9
Verlag: Springer International Publishing
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 236 Seiten, eBook

Reihe: Palgrave Studies in Modern European Literature

Reconfiguring Nietzsche’s seminal impact on modernist literature and culture, this book presents a distinctive new reading of modernism by exploring his sustained philosophical engagement with nihilism and its inextricable tie to pain and sickness. Arguing that modernist texts dramatize the frailty of the ill, the impotent, and the traumatised modern subject unable to render suffering significant through traditional religious means, it uses the Nietzschean diagnoses of nihilism and what he calls 'ressentiment', the entwined feelings of powerlessness and vindictiveness, as heuristic tools to remap the fictional landscapes of Lawrence, Kafka, and Beckett. Lucid, authoritative and accessible, this book will appeal internationally to literature and philosophy scholars and undergraduates as well as to readers in medical and sociological fields.

Zielgruppe

Research

Autoren/Hrsg.

Smith, Stewart

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Introduction: Nietzsche, Nihilism and Modernism.- 2. Friedrich Nietzsche, Nihilism and Meaningless Suffering.- 3. D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover and the Erotic Transcendence of Nihilism.- 4. Franz Kafka’s The Trial and the Interpretation of Suffering.- 5. Samuel Beckett’s Endgame and the Economy of Ressentiment .- 6. Conclusion: Affective Modernism.

Über Autor(innen)

Stewart Smith is an independent scholar. He obtained his PhD from the University of Southampton in 2016.