Overview

Full Product Details

9781501326455

Table of Contents

Reviews

Acquisto presents Baudelaire’s poetry as having been formed ‘both by and against Christianity.’ Baudelaire is both a modern and a theological. Although Christian tenets are present in his writing, he views the redemption as impossible. This rejection of a traditional aspect of Christian philosophy, Acquisto argues, demonstrates Baudelaire’s acceptance of a productive nihilism in which a shared human experience is possible without redemption … This is a challenging, thoughtful work, and Acquisto makes a convincing case for the shared experience of these authors outside faith and linear time. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. -- F. E. Nicholson, North Central College * CHOICE * This is a powerful, complex, and fascinating book ... Acquisto is mentally agile and writes consistently and with clarity about thinkers who are themselves less engaging and rarely as clear. The great success of the book is the way in which he makes a range of very different voices speak across the centuries and the decades in a dialogical feast of commentary and counter-commentary. * French Studies * Joseph Acquisto is a leader in the new generation of interpreters for whom poetry and philosophy, together, provide foundational ethical and religious insights both beyond and against traditional theology or faith. Baudelaire’s recognition of impossible redemption is the germinal insight. Surpassing Walter Benjamin’s doxa of modernity and Paul de Man’s deconstruction, Acquisto lucidly applies Benjamin Fondane’s interpretation of Baudelaire’s abyss and post-theological reflections of Giorgio Agamben, Jean-Luc Nancy, and others, to map out positive meaning that can be achieved by facing despair, beyond nihilism, as exemplified by Emil Cioran. Acquisto provides compelling insights into esthetics and ethics, despair and transcendence, nihilism and survival. Original and truly interdisciplinary. * Edward K. Kaplan, Kevy and Hortense Kaiserman Professor in the Humanities, Brandeis University, USA, and author of Baudelaire’s Prose Poems: The Esthetic, the Ethical, and the Religious in ""The Parisian Prowler"" and Spiritual Radical: Abraham Joshua Heschel in America, 1940-1973 *

Joseph Acquisto is a leader in the new generation of interpreters for whom poetry and philosophy, together, provide foundational ethical and religious insights both beyond and against traditional theology or faith. Baudelaire's recognition of impossible redemption is the germinal insight. Surpassing Walter Benjamin's doxa of modernity and Paul de Man's deconstruction, Acquisto lucidly applies Benjamin Fondane's interpretation of Baudelaire's abyss and post-theological reflections of Giorgio Agamben, Jean-Luc Nancy, and others, to map out positive meaning that can be achieved by facing despair, beyond nihilism, as exemplified by Emil Cioran. Acquisto provides compelling insights into esthetics and ethics, despair and transcendence, nihilism and survival. Original and truly interdisciplinary. Edward K. Kaplan, Kevy and Hortense Kaiserman Professor in the Humanities, Brandeis University, USA, and author of Baudelaire's Prose Poems: The Esthetic, the Ethical, and the Religious in The Parisian Prowler and Spiritual Radical: Abraham Joshua Heschel in America, 1940-1973 Acquisto presents Baudelaire's poetry as having been formed 'both by and against Christianity.' Baudelaire is both a modern and a theological. Although Christian tenets are present in his writing, he views the redemption as impossible. This rejection of a traditional aspect of Christian philosophy, Acquisto argues, demonstrates Baudelaire's acceptance of a productive nihilism in which a shared human experience is possible without redemption ... This is a challenging, thoughtful work, and Acquisto makes a convincing case for the shared experience of these authors outside faith and linear time. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. -- F. E. Nicholson, North Central College CHOICE

Author Information

Joseph Acquisto is Professor of French at the University of Vermont, USA. He is the author or editor of seven books, including Reading Baudelaire with Adorno: Subjectivity, Dissonance, Transcendence (Bloomsbury, 2023), Poetry's Knowing Ignorance (Bloomsbury, 2019), Proust, Music, and Meaning: Theories and Practices of Listening in the Recherche (2017), and Crusoes and Other Castaways in Modern French Literature (2012).

Tab Content 6

Countries Available