En deçà du bien et du mal

ABOUT

In 2007, the literary critic Pierre Jourde could happily write that “as far as contemporary literature is concerned, talking about good and evil seems completely obsolete.” This kind of position is no longer defensible today: it needs to be justified and explained, as it may even seem like a nostalgic, backward-looking intellectual approach, in the face of a radically altered critical paradigm. At a time when the field of literary theory is undergoing an ethical turn that was unthinkable just a few years ago, this book takes the opportunity to examine the many links between literature and morality. The essays in this volume unfold chronologically, from the early modern period to the present day, each examining a particular intersection of literature and morality: their ambition is to identify and problematise the logics of the relationships that characterise aesthetics and ethics.