“Know then thyself, presume not God to scan, the proper study of Mankind is Man”. Despite this wise imperative expressed by Alexander Pope in his Essay on Man (1733-34), the need to “vindicate the ways of God to Man” has always interested the most intelligent minds in both philosophy and theology, among them Plato, Aristotle, St Augustine, William King, Leibniz, and Kant. Theodicy is the attempt to explain the paradoxical coexistence of suffering and Divine benevolence; why, theodicists ask, does God, who is believed to be omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, permit evil to exist at all. The present volume studies the literary discussion of theodicy analysing a wide range of novels, dramas, and poetry from American, Canadian, Irish, English, French and German literatures. The essays – contributed by a team of internationally renowned scholars – discuss the poetic treatment of theodicy from the 17th and 18th centuries to the postmodern period: the catalogue of authors considered includes names such as Francis Bacon, John Milton, William King, Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, Samuel Johnson, William Wordsworth, Oscar Wilde, Albert Camus, John Fowles, Ian McEwan and Irvine Welsh, to name but a few. The book thus illustrates the close traditional affiliation between literature and theodicy and demonstrates that – at least during some phases of their common history – literature could be regarded as theodicy.

Table of Contents:

Preface, p.9

RUDOLF FREIBURG, SUSANNE GRUSS, Erlangen-Nürnberg
Introduction: Literature and Theodicy, Literature as Theodicy, p.13

JÜRGEN KLEIN, Greifswald
Francis Bacon (1561-1626): Natural Philosophy as Theodicy, p.49

SIMONE BRODERS, Erlangen-Nürnberg
“A True Poet, and of the Devil’s Party” – Theodicy and Paradox in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, p.73

HERMANN J. REAL, Münster
Conversations with a Theodicist: William King’s Essay on the Origin of Evil, with Some Sidelights on Hobbes, Milton, and Pope, p.85

KEVIN L. COPE, Baton Rouge
The Panorama of Theodicy, Or, Appealing Impressions of Evil in Assorted 18th-Century Descriptive Writers, with a View toward Leibniz, p.113

BREAN S. HAMMOND, Nottingham
“The Print of a Man’s Naked Foot”: Do-It-Yourself Theodicy in Robinson Crusoe, p.131

IAN SIMPSON ROSS, Vancouver
Aspects of Hume’s Treatment of the Problem of Evil , p.141

JOHN A. BAKER, Paris
Wishful Thinking? Theodicy and the Divine Economy in Edward Young’s Night Thoughts (1742-46), p.153

BRUCE ARNOLD, Glenageary
Aspects of Theodicy in Jonathan Swift’s Work, p.171

FLAVIO GREGORI, Venezia
Gulliver’s Myopic Reformation: Reason and Evil in Gulliver’s Travels, p.181

HOWARD D. WEINBROT, Madison
Hearts of Darkness: Swift, Johnson, and the Narrative Confrontation with Evil, p.205

RUDOLF FREIBURG, Erlangen-Nürnberg
The Pleasures of Pain?: Soame Jenyns versus Samuel Johnson, p.225

ARNO LÖFFLER, Erlangen-Nürnberg
Goldsmith and the “Equal Dealings of Heaven”: The Problem of Evil in The Vicar of Wakefield, p.245

EBERHARD SPÄTH, Erlangen-Nürnberg
“Did He Smile His Work to See?”: Blake and the History of Theodicy, p.261

RICHARD MATLAK, Worcester, Mass.
William Wordsworth’s “Elegiac Stanzas” and Sir George Beaumont’s Peel Castle in a Storm, p.279

DIETER MEINDL, Erlangen-Nürnberg
Melville, Theodicy, and the Grotesque, p.289

HEINZ-JOACHIM MÜLLENBROCK, Göttingen
Charles Kingsley’s Hereward the Wake: The Novelist as a Providential Historian, p.307

HANS ULRICH SEEBER, Stuttgart
The Fascination of Beauty and of Evil in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), p.321

GEORG LANGENHORST, Erlangen-Nürnberg
Struggling with God under the Sign of Job: Job in the English Literature of the 20th Century, p.339

KRYSTYNA STAMIROWSKA, Kraków
Reaching the Heart of the Matter: Sin and Grace in the Novels of Graham Greene and François Mauriac, p.359

RIA OMASREITER-BLAICHER, Erlangen-Nürnberg
The Fortunate Fall: Sin and Sinners in Graham Greene’s Novels, p.371

BERNFRIED NUGEL, Münster
“A Kind of Early Christian Malignity”: Aldous Huxley’s Analysis of Evil in His Later Works, p.385

GISELA SCHLÜTER, Erlangen-Nürnberg
The Theodicy-Sequence in Albert Camus’s La Peste, p.403

SUSANA ONEGA, Zaragoza
Camusian Existentialism and the Question of Evil in the Early Fiction of John Fowles, p.421

MARTIN NICOL, Erlangen-Nürnberg
Living with the Hidden God: The Individual’s Suffering in Modern Poetry, p.441

ERHARD RECKWITZ, Essen
The Evil State: Police Brutality in South African Fiction, p.455

PETER PAUL SCHNIERER, Heidelberg
Violent Redemptions: Negotiations of Evil in Contemporary British and Irish Drama, p.471

ANNEGRET MAACK, Wuppertal
“Writing Moral Fiction in a Moral Vacuum”: Ian McEwan’s and Martin Amis’s Fictional Worlds, p.485

DIETER PETZOLD, Erlangen-Nürnberg
The Problem of Evil in Modern (Anti-)Christian Fantasy Novels, p.501

BARBARA KORTE, Freiburg
“God Keeps Disappearing”: Anne Michaels’s Fugitive Pieces: The Imperatives of Love and Beauty after the Holocaust, p.519

SUSANNE GRUSS, Erlangen-Nürnberg
Megalomaniac Ice-Cream Cone, Sulking Mistress, Sadistic Slacker: God in Postmodern Narratives, p.533

Selected Bibliography, p.551

Notes on Contributors, p.557

Index, p.563

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