THE PICARESQUE SAINT: Representative Figure in Contemporary Fiction

by R.W.B. Lewis ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

This is a collection of essays on six modern novelists Moravia, Camus, Silone, Faulkner, Greene, Malraux- which is a distinguished offering, characterized by penetration, discernment and wit. The title refers to a type of fictional hero which the author sees emerging from the work of the generation after Joyce, Proust, Mann: ""a person who is something of a saint, in the contemporary manner of sainthood, but who is also something of a rogue"". This hero is agonizingly dedicated to life, to humanity, in an atmosphere of decay, of dehumanization; and he is, at the same time, oppressed by an abysmal sense of loss which is usually vague, often overwhelmingly clear. The author traces the development of this new concentration on compassion through Moravia whose world is accounted for by sex, to Camus, who is concerned with the absurdity of reason confronting a senseless universe, to Silone's inquiry into the abrasive reality of modern power, to Greene, who has ""dramatized the contemporary feeling that the religious sense is hostile to human aspiration"". Through an ansicels of their works, particular themes, Lewis, lucidly and with secure taste, distinguishes these writers, with their insistence on what it means to be a man, from their predecessors, especially Joyce, who equally rejected their world, not in favor of man, but in favor of their art. The author is a professor at Rutgers and portions of these essays appeared in Kenyon Review, Modern Writing, Modern Fiction Studies, and will probably find their most enthusiastic readers among that type of audience. Includes extensive notes on each chapter.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Lippincott

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1958

Categories: NONFICTION