Living Well with Pessimism in Nineteenth-Century France

Joseph Acquisto is a Professor of French at the University of Vermont, USA.  His books include Poetry’s Knowing Ignorance (2020), Proust, Music, and Meaning (2017), The Fall Out of Redemption: Writing and Thinking Beyond Salvation in Baudelaire, Cioran, Fondane, Agamben, and Nancy (2015), and French Symbolist Poetry and the Idea of Music (2006).

“This book is an ambitious endeavor, drawing from an extensive range of sources and thinkers. It is well-written and coherent ... . Scholars of literature, philosophy, culture studies, and intellectual history will find this volume inspiring and insightful; moreover, it will appeal to specialists of nineteenth[1]century French literature as well as readers of the history of ideas in general.” (Karen Humphreys, Nineteenth-Century French Studies, ncfs-journal.org, Vol. 52 (3-4), 2024)

• 1. Introduction.- 2. Schopenhauer: Resignation, Compassion, and Narrative.- 3. Debates on Pessimism in Late Nineteenth-Century France.- 4. Pessimism and the Novel: Fiction and the “As-If”.- 5. Pessimism and the Poetic Imagination.- 6. Conclusion: Living Well with Pessimism, Then and Now