Myth in the modern novel : imagining the absolute / Liisa Steinby.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Saariluoma, Liisa, author.

Series:

Culture & conflict ; Bd. 22.

Culture & conflict ; volume 22

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Myth in literature.

Fiction--History and criticism.

Fiction.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 545 pages).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berlin : De Gruyter, [2023]

Summary:

Myth in the Modern Novel: Imagining the Absolute posits a twofold thesis. First, although Modernity is regarded as an era dominated by science and rational thought, it has in fact not relinquished the hold of myth, a more "primitive" form of thought which is difficult to reconcile with modern rationality. Second, some of the most important statements as to the reconcilability of myth and Modernity are found in the work of certain prominent novelists. This book offers a close examination of the work of eleven writers from the late eighteenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first, representing German, French, American, Czech and Swedish literature. The analyses of individual novels reveal a variety of intriguing views of myth in Modernity, and offer an insight into the "modernizing" transformations myth has undergone when applied in the modern novel. The study shows the presence of the "subconscious", the mythic layer, in modern western culture and how this has been dealt with in novelistic literature.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Foreword

Contents

Introduction: Myth in the Modern Novel?

Part I: Assimilation and Amalgamation: Myth and Modernity

Chapter 1 Imagining the Absolute: Herder’s Rehabilitation of Myth

Chapter 2 The Early Romantic Idea of a New Mythology: Poeticising the World in Novalis’s Heinrich von Ofterdingen

Chapter 3 Thomas Mann’s Joseph and His Brothers: The Myth of Evolving Humanity

Chapter 4 The Material Imagination in Michel Tournier’s Friday

Chapter 5 From Traditional to Modern Use of Tribal Myths in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony

Chapter 6 Torgny Lindgren: Religious Mythopoiesis and Its Modern Surrogates

Part II: Maintaining the Distinction: Myth or Modernity

Chapter 7 The Night Side of Nature in E. T. A. Hoffmann’s The Devil’s Elixirs

Chapter 8 Myth and Science in Zola’s Naturalism

Chapter 9 Germanness and Mythic Evil in Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus

Chapter 10 Christa Wolf’s Cassandra and Medea: Myth as a Disguise for a Critique of Contemporary Society

Chapter 11 Milan Kundera: The Search beyond Myth for the Authentic Individual

Conclusion: Coming to Terms with Myth

Literature

Name Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 501-539) and index.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Other Format:

Print version: Steinby, Liisa Myth in the modern novel

ISBN:

9783111026503

9783111027005

OCLC:

1372395125