The Problem of Free Will in David Foster Wallace

1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-032-67667-8
Verlag: Routledge

Buch, Englisch, 286 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 585 g

Reihe: Routledge Research in American Literature and Culture

This book argues that David Foster Wallace failed to provide a response to the existential predicament of our time. Wallace wanted to confront despair through art, but he remained trapped, and his entrapment originates in the "existentialist contradiction": the impossibility of affirming the meaningfulness of life and an ethics of compassion while believing in free will.

To substantiate this thesis, the analysis reads Wallace in conversation with the existentialist philosophers and writers who influenced him: Søren Kierkegaard, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. It compares his non-fiction with the sociologies of Christopher Lasch, Zygmunt Bauman, Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim, and Anthony Giddens. And it finds inspiration in Giacomo Leopardi, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Emanuele Severino to conclude that the philosophy which pervades Wallace’s works entails despair and represents the essence of our civilization’s interpretation of the world.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate

Autoren/Hrsg.

Pitari, Paolo

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Strömungen & Epochen
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur Amerikanische Literatur
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Moderne Philosophische Disziplinen Existenzphilosophie, Lebensphilosophie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface: The problem of free will             

 

Introduction: The problem of free will in David Foster Wallace    

 

Part one: Literary truth according to David Foster Wallace

 

Chapter 1: The influence of Leo Tolstoy’s What Is Art? on David Foster Wallace’s literary project             

 

Chapter 2: The influence of Jean-Paul Sartre’s “What Is Literature?” on David Foster Wallace’s literary project    

 

Part two: The problem of free will in David Foster Wallace’s literary sociology           

 

Chapter 3: The system of David Foster Wallace’s literary sociology            

 

Chapter 4: On narcissism: David Foster Wallace and Christopher Lasch    

 

Chapter 5: On morality and the absurd: David Foster Wallace and Zygmunt Bauman             

 

Chapter 6: On existentialism and capitalism: David Foster Wallace and Ulrich and Elisabeth Beck         

 

Chapter 7: On ontological insecurity: David Foster Wallace and Anthony Giddens             

 

Part three: The problem of free will in David Foster Wallace’s fiction: A comparative reading of Fyodor Dostoevsky and David Foster Wallace      

 

Chapter 8: A critical history of the philosophical criticism on Fyodor Dostoevsky and David Foster Wallace     

 

Chapter 9: Fyodor Dostoevsky, Mikhail Bakhtin, and David Foster Wallace: United in existentialism

 

Chapter 10: The problem of free will in Crime and Punishment and The Pale King      

 

Bibliography     

 

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Paolo Pitari completed a joint PhD in English at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and at LMU Munich. He is the author of numerous academic articles in literature and philosophy. This research was funded by the University of Venice, the JFK Institute of Freie Universität Berlin, and the DAAD.