Claire White - Böcker

Émile Zola was the nineteenth century's pre-eminent naturalist writer and theoretician, spearheading a cultural movement that was rooted in positivist thought and an ethic of sober observation. As a journalist, Zola drove home his vision of a type of literature that described rather than prescribed, that anatomised rather than embellished - one that worked, in short, against idealism. Yet in the pages of his fiction, a complex picture emerges in which Zola appears drawn to the ideal-to the speculative, the implausible, the visionary - more than he liked to admit. Spanning the period from Zola's epic Germinal to his fateful intervention in the Dreyfus Affair, Zola's Dream is the first book to explore how the 'quarrel' between idealists and naturalists shaped the ambitions of the novel at the end of the nineteenth century, when differences over literary aesthetics invariably spoke of far-reaching cultural and political struggles.

This volume examines the anxieties that caused many nineteenth-century writers to insist on literature as a laboured and labouring enterprise. Whereas previous studies have focused on national literatures in isolation, this volume demonstrates the two-way traffic between British and French conceptions of literary labour.

In recent decades, a new scientific approach to understand, explain, and predict many features of religion has emerged. The cognitive science of religion (CSR) has amassed research on the forces that shape the tendency for humans to be religious and on what forms belief takes. It suggests that religion, like language or music, naturally emerges in humans with tractable similarities. This new approach has profound implications for how we understand religion, including why it appears so easily, and why people are willing to fight—and die—for it. Yet it is not without its critics, and some fear that scholars are explaining the ineffable mystery of religion away, or showing that religion is natural proves or disproves the existence of God.An Introduction to the Cognitive Science of Religion offers students and general readers an accessible introduction to the approach, providing an overview of key findings and the debates that shape it. The volume includes a glossary of key terms, and each chapter includes suggestions for further thought and further reading as well as chapter summaries highlighting key points.This book is an indispensable resource for introductory courses on religion and a much-needed option for advanced courses.