Pity in Fin-de-Siècle French Culture

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Pity in Fin-de-Siècle French Culture "Liberté, Egalité, Pitié"

Gonzalo J. Sánchez

Book Code: C8000

ISBN: 0-275-98000-6

ISBN-13: 978-0-275-98000-9

DOI:

328 pages, n/a

Praeger Publishers

Publication: 2/28/2004

List Price: $75.00 (UK Sterling Price: £41.95)

Availability: In Stock

Media Type: Hardcover

Trim Size: 6 1/8 X 9 1/4

Subjects:

Description: The scrutiny of pity as a cardinal altruistic attribute has emerged in the last two decades as a significant common denominator in disciplines ranging from philosophy to social psychology and comparative literature to gender studies. "Pity" is a term and concept of tremendous importance to a historian and interpreter of the humanities and social sciences. It is a prism through which to examine how given cultures attach value to nonrational components of social life and of human flourishing. Sánchez describes how an appeal to a reader's sense of traditional "pity" in the writings of French philosophers, pedagogues, social theorists, and novelists interacted, in the sociopolitical sphere of the fin-de-siécle, with the interest in studying and promoting this very virtue as a principle of social attachment. This study brings to light striking parallels from one fin-de-siécle to another, highlighting the extensive rhetorical and emotive investment of various French disciplines in both probing and promoting pity. In doing so, a number of French thinkers and writers, both major and subsequently ignored, forged a cognitive theory of sentiments that intriguingly presages contemporary theories. They also codified a discursively and rhetorically doctrinaire pity that was reflected in pedagogy, especially female education; political philosophy and psychology; literary criticism and fiction--in ways that are still instructive for us today.

Table of Contents:

Introduction: Pity, Past and Present
Prologue: The French Pro-Pity Tradition
Pity at the Center of a Renascent Sentimentalism
"Affective Philosophy": Pity as Cognitive Sentiment
The "Altar" of Civilization
Between Social Psychology and Pedagogy
Patrimonial, Social, and Pedagogical Anxieties Around Pity
Schopenhauer and Nietzsche
The Solidarity Movement and the Dreyfus Affair
Engendering Pity
The Patrimony of Literary Pity in Fin-de-Siècle Fiction
Debating at the Goncourts' "Grenier"
Cosmopolitanism or Francité
From Germinie to Germinal
A Rhetoric of the Feminine: Paul Bourget, Octave Mirbeau, and Leon Bloy
Moving the Past: Marcel Proust and Pierre Loti
Conclusion
Bibliography

LC Card Number: 2003042066

LCC Class: BJ703

Dewey Class: 177


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