Religious Experience and the Modernist Novel

by Pericles Lewis

The modernist period witnessed attempts to explain religious experience in non-religious terms. Such novelists as Henry James, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and Franz Kafka found methods to describe through fiction the sorts of experiences that had traditionally been the domain of religious mystics and believers. In Religious Experience and the Modernist Novel, Pericles Lewis considers the development of modernism in the novel in relation to changing attitudes to religion. Through comparisons of major novelists with sociologists and psychologists from the same period, Lewis identifies the unique ways that literature addressed the changing spiritual situation of the early twentieth century. He challenges accounts that assume secularisation as the main narrative for understanding twentieth-century literature. Lewis explores the experiments that modernists undertook in order to invoke the sacred without directly naming it, resulting in a compelling study for readers of twentieth-century modernist literature.

Genres: Literary Criticism

246 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[فلاح رحيم · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the most interesting books about the nature of the Modernists' attempts to revive the spirit of religion without belief in the traditional religious institutions. It is based on a detailed study of the relationship between the major Modernist novelists (Henry James, Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, Franz Kafka and James Joyce) and the main Western thinkers who have developed their own theories about the religious experience (William James, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber and Sigmund Freud respectively, i.e. each novelist is illuminated by a thinker). Dante is introduced in the last chapter to illuminate Joyce. By the end of the book you find yourself enriched with the discussions about these great names. The book explains the reason behind the powerful presence of religion in our modern world and the way it influenced the Modernists themselves.