Confronting Evil

Scott M. Powers

Description

Confronting Evil: The Psychology of Secularization in Modern French Literature holds that the concept of evil is central to the psychology of secularism. Drawing on notions of secularization as a phenomenon of ambivalence or dualism in which religion continues to exist alongside secularity in exerting influence on modern French thought, author Scott M. Powers enlists psychoanalytic theory on mourning and sublimation, the philosophical concept of the sublime, Charles Taylor's theory of religious and secular "cross-pressures," and William James's psychology of conversion to account for the survival of religious themes in Baudelaire, Zola, Huysmans, and Céline. For Powers, Baudelaire's prose poems, Zola's experimental novels, and Huysmans's and Céline's early narratives attempt to account for evil by redefining the traditionally religious concept along secular lines. However, when unmitigated by the mechanisms of irony and sublimation, secular confrontation with the dark and seemingly absurd dimension of man leads modern writers such as Huysmans and Céline, paradoxically, to embrace a religious or quasi-religious understanding of good and evil. In the end, Powers finds that how authors cope with the reality of suffering and human wickedness has a direct bearing on the ability to sustain a secular vision.
Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter One: Writing against Theodicy: Secularization in Baudelaire’s Poetry and Critical Essays

Chapter Two: The Mourning of God and the Ironies of Secularization in Baudelaire’s Le Spleen de Paris

Chapter Three: Sublimation and Conversion in Zola and Huysmans

Chapter Four: The Staging of Doubt: Zola and Huysmans on Lourdes

Chapter Five: Religious and Secular Conversions: Transformations in Céline’s Medical Perspective on Evil

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• European
• French

Informations

• Publié par: Purdue University Press
• Date de parution: 15 avril 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781612494531
• Langue: English

Extrait

CONFRONTING EVIL
Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures
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CONFRONTING EVIL
The Psychology of Secularization in Modern French Literature
Scott M. Powers
Purdue University Press West Lafayette, Indiana
Copyright ©2016 by Purdue University. All rights reserved.
The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Printed in the United States of America
Template for interior design by Anita Noble; template for cover by Heidi Branham.
Cover photo:
The Gates of Hell
1880–1900
Auguste Rodin, France, 1840–1917
Bronze 1985.86
Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University; Gift of the B. Gerald Cantor Collection
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Powers, Scott M., author.
Title: Confronting Evil : the psychology of secularization in modern French literature / Scott M. Powers.
Description: West Lafayette, Indiana : Purdue University Press, [2016] | Series: Purdue studies in Romance literatures ; 66 | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015035809| ISBN 9781557537416 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781612494524 (epdf) | ISBN 9781612494531 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: French literature--20th century--History and criticism. | French literature--21st century--History and criticism. | Evil in literature. | Ethics in literature. | Secularization--France.
Classification: LCC PQ307.E87 P69 2016 | DDC 840.9/353--dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015035809
For Alex
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter One
Writing against Theodicy: Secularization in Baudelaire’s Poetry and Critical Essays
Chapter Two
The Mourning of God and the Ironies of Secularization in Baudelaire’s Le Spleen de Paris
Chapter Three
Sublimation and Conversion in Zola and Huysmans
Chapter Four
The Staging of Doubt: Zola and Huysmans on Lourdes
Chapter Five
Religious and Secular Conversions: Transformations in Céline’s Medical Perspective on Evil
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
I could not have completed this study without the generous support of mentors, colleagues, friends, and family at various stages of its development. As this project began several years ago as a doctoral dissertation, I thank Madeleine Dobie for her assiduous guidance, and for its critical readers, including Hilary Malawer, Felicia McCarren, Vaheed Ramazani, and Jean-Marie Gleize. I remain indebted to Miguel Benasayag who, in granting me multiple interviews, afforded me the unique opportunity to probe further the philosophy with which this work is very much in conversation. I am grateful both to the Malawer family for welcoming me into their home and to Tulane University for granting me a year-long fellowship at École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, where I was able to make great strides in both the research and the writing stages.
In a second, post-graduate stage, invaluable conversations with Vaheed Ramazani assisted me in reorienting my study of secularization by situating it within a psychological framework. An invitation to participate in the 2009 Fleurs du Mal seminar at the National Humanities Center, led by Jonathan Culler, gave me new insight into poetry on evil. The University of Mary Washington has been a pivotal player in providing numerous opportunities for me to advance in the project, including the Jepson Fellowship, a sabbatical, several research grants, and the book’s subvention.
Some materials in this book first appeared in another form in other publications. I would like to thank the editors of the University of Nebraska Press for allowing me to use my article that first appeared in one of their journals. Chapter 1 is a modified and supplemented version of “Writing against Theodicy: Reflections on the Co-existence of God and Evil in Baudelaire’s Poetry and Critical Essays,” Nineteenth Century French Studies 39.1 & 2 (2010): 77–98. It is reproduced with permission from the University of Nebraska Press. Copyright Nineteenth Century French Studies 2010. I am also thankful to the editors of Inter-disciplinary.Net and Dalhousie French Studies for allowing me to republish parts of my articles. Parts of Chapter 4 first appeared in a different form as “The Cross-Pressures of Secularization and the Lourdes Phenomenon in Zola and Huysmans,” Uneasy Humanity: Perpetual Wrestling with Evil , ed. Colette Balmain and Nanette Norris (Oxford: Inter-disciplinary.Net Press, 2009), 79–86. Parts of Chapter 5 were adapted from my article that first appeared as “Evil and Medicine: Interpreting Céline’s Diagnostic Narratives,” Dalhousie French Studies 67 (2004): 63–74.
Chapters of the book’s final form have benefited from diligent readers who have generously given their time, including Joseph Acquisto, Brooke Di Lauro, Bill Hartland, Denis Provencher, and two anonymous reviewers for Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures. I especially thank Susan Y. Clawson and the editorial staff at PSRL for making this publication possible.
Finally, to those who have made this project worthwhile, I would like to give special thanks: my students at the University of Mary Washington, and in particular Cameron Doucette, Emily Enterline, and Lisa Grimes, who shared my passion for the writers and themes treated in this book; my family, for their loving support and encouragement at every step of the way; my mother, for instilling in me the passion for learning; and Alex, for his inspiring love and devotion and to whom this book is dedicated.
Introduction
A study of the many challenges posed by the modern literary text must include a serious consideration of the psychological dimensions of secularization. A broad understanding exists that the modernization of Western societies largely entails the retreat of religion from social institutions and from the individual’s perception of the world. This idea has contributed to the development of secularization studies in recent years. 1 However, this emerging discipline has yet to elaborate a psychology that can substantially benefit the hermeneutics of modern literature. Through the critical analysis of works by nineteenth- and twentieth-century French writers, this book aims precisely to uncover a “psychology of secularization” at the core of modernity.
For the notion of the psychology of secularization to be meaningful, we must demarcate it as distinct in some fundamental way from the mindset of believers who interpret current events and personal life developments within the framework of God’s plan. Correspondingly, as “secularization” connotes a process, its psychology should also be differentiated from that of the putative fixity of the “secular mind,” which is generally discussed as a consciousness firmly grounded in a materialist way of perceiving the world, and characterized by what philosopher Charles Taylor describes as self-sufficient humanism (18).
Over the past century, much has been written on both the religious and secular minds. The pioneer work of Auguste Comte, Emile Durkheim, Sigmund Freud, and Carl Jung, followed by the contributions of Rudolf Otto, Paul Tillich, and Peter Berger, forged a veritable psychology of religion that has become greatly enhanced in recent years by myriad studies often attempting to explain the nature of the religious mindset through the lens of the disciplines of anthropology, sociology, and evolutionary biology. Unlike the psychology of religion, that of the secular mind has not traditionally drawn attention to itself. This is due in part to the problematic conjecture among the scientific community that the thought processes of nonbelievers simply constituted “normal psychology.” Nonetheless, scholars have studied influential theorists from the French philosophes to Karl Marx as examples of secular minds (or humanists) who subtract notions of the divine from human values or concerns. 2 In contrast, little effort has yet been made to elucidate a psychology of secularization, conceived not as a fixed understanding of the world but rat