The Absence of God in Modernist Literature

by Erickson, Gregory

• ISBN13: 9781403977588
• ISBN10: 1403977585
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-04-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This book uses recent thought in continental philosophy and postmodern theology to interpret hidden and contradictory "god-ideas" in texts of modernism such as Henry James'sThe Golden Bowl, Marcel Proust'sIn Search of Lost Time, James Joyce'sPortrait of the Artist As a Young Man, and Arnold Schoenberg's operaMoses und Aron.

Author Biography

Gregory Erickson earned his Ph.D. in English from The Graduate Center of the City University of New York.  He teaches world literature and writing at Mannes College and New York University. He is also a professional trombonist, and from 2001-2005 was the Director of Classical Music at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments
Introduction: Literature after the Death of God	p. 1
Reading God/God Writing: The Irrational and Difficult Name	p. 17
The Golden Bowl, Atheology, and Nothing	p. 57
A La Recherche and Proust's Unstable Metaphors of Divinity	p. 93
Proust's Theology of Music	p. 123
Schoenberg's Godless Silences: Atonality, Poetry, and the Challenge of Coherence	p. 143
Schoenberg's Impossible God: Moses und Aron	p. 177
Epilogue: The Other Side of God: Reading in the Dark	p. 199
Notes	p. 211
Bibliography	p. 221
Index	p. 233
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