Modes of Faith: Secular Surrogates for Lost Religious Belief by Theodore Ziolkowski newly listed for sale on the fantastic BookLovers of Bath web site!
Published: The University of Chicago Press, 2007, Hardback in dust wrapper.
From the cover: In the decades surrounding World War I, religious belief receded in the face of radical new ideas such as Marxism, modern science, Nietzschean philosophy, and critical theology. Modes of Faith addresses both this decline of religious belief and the new modes of secular faith that took religions place in the minds of many writers and poets.
In this masterpiece of comparative literary studies, veteran critic Theodore Ziolkowski surveys more than thirty key literary figures including Stefan George, Paul Valery, James Joyce, Alfred Doblin, Ignazio Silone, Hermann Hesse, Aldous Huxley, and W. Somerset Maugham and identifies the leading substitutes for religious faith that defined the emergence of twentieth-century modernity: art, escapist flight, socialism, politicized myth, and Utopian vision. Each writer, Ziolkowski shows, experienced an initial loss of religious faith and restlessly sought out alternatives, including the religion of art as it manifests itself in ritual, order, or escape; pilgrimages to the East in search of new faith; and political commitment, whether to socialism or fascism. When these alternatives disappointed, many writers returned to religion in old and new shapes.
A timely study of the spiritual upheaval in the West at the beginning of the last century, Modes of Faith offers an abundance of insight into the human compulsion to believe in forces that transcend the individual.
Very Good+ in Very Good+ Dust Wrapper.
Red boards with Gilt titling to the Spine. [XII] 283 pages. Index. Bibliography. 9¼” x 6¼”.
Of course, if you don’t like this one, may I tempt with you something from here?
