- 256 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
Explores the coevolution of Absolute idealist philosophy and British fiction from the Romantic period forward.
Absolute Fiction examines the principal form of idealism in the modern period, Absolute idealism, which posits that mind and matter must be understood in relation to all of reality-the universe, the Absolute. This premise was variously articulated by philosophers and writers from Germany, Britain, India, and beyond. Absolute Fiction traces a genealogy from the creative adoption of Hinduism and German Idealism by Coleridge and Carlyle to Aldous Huxley's novelization of Advaita Ved?nta. Justin Prystash argues that canonical figures, such as Hegel and George Eliot, as well as overlooked ones, such as May Sinclair and Anukul Chandra Mukerji, found in the Absolute a provocation to account for more and more swaths of reality-accounts that required, at the limits of philosophy, fictional prosthetics. The thematic and formal experimentation of Romanticism, realism, science fiction, horror/weird fiction, and modernism all draw upon Absolute idealism to reconceive subjectivity and ethics. These experiments, far from being antithetical to contemporary literary criticism, reveal it to be more idealist than many would like to acknowledge.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction Absolute Fiction
- Chapter 1 A Meditation on Backgrounds: Coleridge, Carlyle, Hegel
- Chapter 2 Absolute Realism: Constance Naden and George Eliot
- Chapter 3 Across Ontology and Ethics: F. H. Bradley, Samuel Butler, and Science Fiction
- Chapter 4 The Dark Absolute: Unveiling Divine Horror in Arthur Machen and May Sinclair
- Chapter 5 Amphibious Modernism: Advaita Vedānta and Aldous Huxley
- Conclusion Old Idealism and New Materialism
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
- Back Cover