“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.

Aus dem Inhalt: RUDOLF FREIBURG, SUSANNE GRUSS, Erlangen-Nürnberg Introduction: Literature and Theodicy, Literature as Theodicy, p.13 17th/18th Century 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 19th Century 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 20th Century 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