The Seduction of Pessimism in the Novel

Name: The Seduction of Pessimism in the Novel
Brand: ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS
SKU: 9781666901399
Price: 266.0 AUD
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ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERSISBN: 9781666901399

Eros, Failure, and the Quarrel with Philosophy

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$266.00

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By Tom Ribitzky
Imprint: LEXINGTON BOOKS
Release Date: January 13, 2025
Format: HARDBACK
Pages: 538

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The Seduction of Pessimism in the Novel: Eros, Futility, and the Quarrel with Philosophy explores the novel as a response to the Platonic myth that narrates the rift at the core of our being. Eros is supposedly the consolation for this rift, but the history of the novel documents its expression as one of frustrated desires, neuroses, anxieties, and cosmic doom. As if repeating the trauma from that original split in Plato-a split that also divides philosophy from literature-the novel treats eros as a site of loss and grief, from the medieval romances to Goethe, Emily Bronte, Proust, Mann, Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, and Nabokov. The pessimism that emerges from this eros, tells us something fundamental about who we are, something that only the novel can say. At a time when both education and leisure are increasingly ignoring the novel's imperative to sit with ambiguity, complexity, and contingency, and as we are hurtling toward a bleak future of climate catastrophe and political instability, the novel is one of the last bastions of humanity even as it is quickly being eroded.

Tom Ribitzky has a Ph.D. in comparative literature from The Graduate Center (CUNY).

Acknowledgments Chapter One: The Genre of Failure Chapter Two: Kicking and Screaming: Pessimism Between Etymology and Entomology Chapter Three: Albertine's Absence Chapter Four: Failed Consolations in Plato's Shadow Chapter Five: From a Failed Theory of the Novel to a Novel of Failed Theories Chapter Six: The Criminality and Illegitimacy of the Novel Chapter Seven: Consternations Chapter Eight: Constellations Chapter Nine: "A Globed Compacted Thing": Woolf's Cosmogony of Love and the Paradox of Failure in To the Lighthouse Chapter Ten: Cosmic Pessimism in Lady Chatterley's Lover: D.H. Lawrence's Tristan Legend for the Twentieth Century Chapter Eleven: "A Last Mirage of Wonder and Hopelessness": Andersen's "The Little Mermaid" as a Shadow Text of Nabokov's Lolita Chapter Twelve: Kierkegaard's Kiss: A Contribution to a Theory of the Novel Chapter Thirteen: In Search of Lost Being Chapter Fourteen: Seduction Against Production: The Novel as a Tool of Pedagogy in a World Doomed to Neoliberal Optimism Conclusion: Concluding Unscientific Postscript Bibliography About the Author

The Seduction of Pessimism in the Novel

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