1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910300012803321

Autore

Smith Stewart

Titolo

Nietzsche and Modernism : Nihilism and Suffering in Lawrence, Kafka and Beckett / / by Stewart Smith

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cham : , : Springer International Publishing : , : Imprint : Palgrave Macmillan, , 2018

ISBN

9783319755359

3319755358

Edizione

[1st ed. 2018.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (XI, 236 p.)

Collana

Palgrave Studies in Modern European Literature, , 2634-6486

Disciplina

809.04

Soggetti

Literature, Modern - 20th century

European literature

Continental philosophy

Twentieth-Century Literature

European Literature

Continental Philosophy

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

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.

Sommario/riassunto

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 denuded of the traditional means to justify or redeem one's suffering, 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.