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Living Well with Pessimism in Nineteenth-Century France

Joseph Acquisto author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Springer Nature Switzerland AG

Published:5th Feb '21

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Living Well with Pessimism in Nineteenth-Century France cover

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.

“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)

ISBN: 9783030610135

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

304 pages

1st ed. 2021