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Modes of Faith: Secular Surrogates for Lost Religious Belief

Modes of Faith: Secular Surrogates for Lost Religious Belief

Publié le par Gabriel Marcoux-Chabot (Source : University of Chicago Press website)


Theodore ZIOLKOWSKI, Modes of Faith: Secular Surrogates for Lost Religious Belief, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2007, 296 p.
ISBN 978-0-226-98363-9
ISBN-10 0-226-98363-3


SUMMARY

In the decades surrounding World War I, religious belief receded in theface of radical new ideas such as Marxism, modern science, Nietzscheanphilosophy, and critical theology. Modes of Faith addressesboth this decline of religious belief and the new modes of secularfaith that took religion’s place in the minds of many writers and poets.

TheodoreZiolkowski here examines the motives for this embrace of the secular,locating new modes of faith in art, escapist travel, socialism,politicized myth, and utopian visions. James Joyce, he reveals, turnedto art as an escape while Hermann Hesse made a pilgrimage to India insearch of enlightenment. Other writers, such as Roger Martin du Gardand Thomas Mann, sought temporary solace in communism or myth. And H.G. Wells, Ziolkowski argues, took refuge in utopian dreams projected inanother dimension altogether.

Rooted in innovative and carefulcomparative reading of the work of writers from France, England,Germany, Italy, and Russia, Modes of Faith is a critical masterpiece bya distinguished literary scholar that offers an abundance of insight toanyone interested in the human compulsion to believe in forces thattranscend the individual.