List of pessimistic literature

List of works of literature that have expressed themes closely related to philosophical pessimism.

List

Image Name Author Date of publication
Notes from Underground[1] Fyodor Dostoyevsky 1864
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas[2] Ursula K. Le Guin 1973
Small Moral Works[3]: 52  Giacomo Leopardi 1898
The Conspiracy Against the Human Race Thomas Ligotti 2010
Blood Meridian[4] Cormac McCarthy 1985
The Road[4] Cormac McCarthy 2006
The Book of Disquiet[1] Fernando Pessoa 1982
Infinite Resignation Eugene Thacker 2018
The City of Dreadful Night[5]: 55  Thomson, James "B.V." 1874
The Schopenhauer Cure Yalom, Irvin D 2005
Candide Voltaire 1759
Endgame[5]: 91  Samuel Beckett 1957
Lazarus (short story)

Andreyev, Leonid

1906
No Longer Human[1] Osamu Dazai 1948
The Sorrows of Young Werther[5]: 56–57 [1] Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1774
The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia Samuel Johnson 1759
Confession (Leo Tolstoy)[6]: 147–151  Leo Tolstoy 1882
Journey to the End of the Night[7]: 54–55  Louis-Ferdinand Céline 1932
The Unbearable Heaviness of Being Carroll Wainwright 2023
The Fall Albert Camus 1956
Kaddish for an Unborn Child Imre Kertész 1990
Kappa Ryunosuke Akutagawa 1927
El Criticón Baltasar Gracián 1651

References

  1. ^ a b c d Thacker, Eugene (2018). Infinite Resignation. Repeater. ISBN 978-1912248193.
  2. ^ Contestabile, Bruno (2 January 2016). "The Denial of the World from an Impartial View". Contemporary Buddhism. 17 (1): 49–61. doi:10.1080/14639947.2015.1104003. S2CID 148168698.
  3. ^ Dienstag, Joshua Foa (2009). Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0691141121.
  4. ^ a b "Cormac McCarthy: An American Philosophy". The Artifice. May 26, 2014. Archived from the original on July 28, 2020. Retrieved April 26, 2020.
  5. ^ a b c Feltham, Colin (2016). Depressive Realism: Interdisciplinary perspectives (Explorations in Mental Health). Routledge. ISBN 978-1138823549.
  6. ^ Ligotti, Thomas (2018). The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror. Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0143133148.
  7. ^ Thoma, Merlin (1980). Louis-Ferdinand Céline. New York: New Directions. ISBN 0-8112-0754-4.