Details

God and Self in the Confessional Novel

von: John D. Sykes, Jr.
50,28 €
Verlag:	Palgrave Macmillan
Format:	PDF
Veröffentl.:	08.06.2018
ISBN/EAN:	9783319913223
Sprache:	englisch

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Beschreibungen

Titelbeschreibung

God and Self in the Confessional Novel explores the question: what happened to the theological practice of confession when it entered the modern novel?  Beginning with the premise that guilt remains a universal human concern, this book considers confession via the classic confessional texts of Augustine and Rousseau. Employing this framework, John D. Sykes, Jr. examines Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, Percy’s Lancelot, and McEwan’s Atonement to investigate the evolution of confession and guilt in literature from the eighteenth century to the early twenty-first century.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1.       Chapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2 Augustine and Rousseau: Confessio laudis, Confessio peccatorum, and the Nature of the Self

2.1   Augustine: The Rhetoric of Confessio and the Unfinished Self

2.2   Rousseau: The Rhetoric of Justification and the Monadic Self

3.       Chapter 3 The Sorrows of Young Werther: Confessions without Confession

3.1   Nature and Confessio laudis

3.2   Guilt and Confessio peccatorum

Chapter 4 Notes from Underground: Self-Deception and the Dialogic Self

4.1   Vicious Circles: Recursive Narrative and the Snarling Cry of Freedom

4.2   Loopholes: Self-Deception and Endless Confession

4.3   The Road Not Taken: Faith and Kenotic Love

4.4   Confessio peccatorum and Confessio laudis Redux 

5.       Chapter 5 Lancelot: Dialogic Consciousness and the Triadic Self

5.1   Alter Ego, Memory, and Self-Definition

5.2   The Unholy Grail, Love, and the Trinitarian Self

6.       Chapter 6 Atonement: The Novel’s Confessional Limit

6.1   Literary History and the Ethics of Fiction

6.2   Self-Deception and the Author-as-God 

7.       Chapter 7 Conclusion

Autorenportrait

John D. Sykes, Jr. is the Mary and Harry Brown Professor of English and Religion at Wingate University, USA.  He is the author of Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, and the Aesthetic of Revelation (2007) and has published widely in the field of theology and literature.

Back cover copy

God and Self in the Confessional Novel explores the question: what happened to the theological practice of confession when it entered the modern novel?  Beginning with the premise that guilt remains a universal human concern, this book considers confession via the classic confessional texts of Augustine and Rousseau. Employing this framework, John D. Sykes, Jr. examines Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, Percy’s Lancelot, and McEwan’s Atonement to investigate the evolution of confession and guilt in literature from the eighteenth century to the early twenty-first century.

Sonderbeitrag

Draws on novels from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuryExamines theological, historical, and philosophical influences on confessionConsiders confession and guilt both within and outside religious constructs

Unpublished endorsement

“This is a deeply engaged, psychologically and theologically astute study of the genre of confessional autobiography in modern and post-modern literature. Cogently argued and lucidly written, it offers a compelling perspective on representative major works of fiction, extraordinarily illuminating because it takes the ‘long view’ of their evolution, reaching back to Augustine and tracking emerging conceptions of the self through Montaigne and Rousseau to our own ‘selfie’ culture. This is a wonderfully useful work of scholarly reflection. I heartily recommend Sykes’ study to all who study or teach the modern novel.” (David Lyle Jeffrey, Distinguished Professor of Literature and Humanities, Baylor University, USA and author of People of the Book: Christian Identity and Literary Culture, 1996)“Both erudite and accessible, this engaging study will appeal to a wide range of scholars and students. Sykes convincingly establishes the deep architectonics of the confessional novel by situating it in relation to the legacies of Augustine and Rousseau. He is equally attentive to the complexities of literary history and of individual fictions, presenting incisive new readings of major works by Goethe and Dostoevsky as well as representative twentieth-century and contemporary authors.” (Farrell O'Gorman, Professor of English, Belmont Abbey College, USA, and author of Catholicism and American Borders in the Gothic Literary Imagination, 2017)