Nietzsche and Modernism [electronic resource] : Nihilism and Suffering in Lawrence, Kafka and Beckett /
Smith, Stewart.author.
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.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
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.
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.
Literature, Modern-20th century.
European literature.
Continental Philosophy.
Twentieth-Century Literature.
European Literature.
Continental Philosophy.