God and Self in the Confessional Novel

Description

God and Self in the Confessional Novel explores the question: what happened to the theological practice of confession when it entered the modern novel? Beginning with the premise that guilt remains a universal human concern, this book considers confession via the classic confessional texts of Augustine and Rousseau. Employing this framework, John D. Sykes, Jr. examines Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, Percy’s Lancelot, and McEwan’s Atonement to investigate the evolution of confession and guilt in literature from the eighteenth century to the early twenty-first century. Front Matter ....Pages i-xii Introduction (John D. Sykes Jr.)....Pages 1-11 Augustine and Rousseau: Confessio Laudis, Confessio Peccatorum, and the Nature of the Self (John D. Sykes Jr.)....Pages 13-37 The Sorrows of Young Werther: Confessions Without Confession (John D. Sykes Jr.)....Pages 39-60 Notes from Underground: Self-Deception and the Dialogic Self (John D. Sykes Jr.)....Pages 61-88 Lancelot: Dialogic Consciousness and the Triadic Self (John D. Sykes Jr.)....Pages 89-114 Atonement: The Novel’s Confessional Limit (John D. Sykes Jr.)....Pages 115-140 Conclusion (John D. Sykes Jr.)....Pages 141-151 Back Matter ....Pages 153-157