The Absence of God in Modernist Literature

This monograph examines the shifting representations of divine absence in modernist literature, offering a comprehensive analysis of how early twentieth-century writers grappled with questions of religious belief in an increasingly secular age. Erickson traces the intellectual and cultural currents that shaped modernist approaches to the sacred, demonstrating how writers from diverse traditions responded to what many perceived as God's withdrawal from modern experience.

The study employs intellectual history methods to contextualize literary works within broader philosophical and theological debates of the period. Erickson examines how modernist writers engaged with nineteenth-century critiques of religion, particularly those emerging from German philosophy and biblical criticism, while simultaneously developing new aesthetic forms to express spiritual crisis. The analysis encompasses major figures including Joyce, Eliot, Woolf, and Kafka, as well as lesser-known writers whose work illuminates the period's religious anxieties.

Central to Erickson's argument is the claim that modernist literature's treatment of divine absence represents neither simple secularization nor straightforward atheism. Instead, these texts reveal complex negotiations between traditional religious frameworks and emerging secular worldviews. The monograph demonstrates how modernist formal innovations—stream of consciousness, fragmentation, mythical method—served as vehicles for exploring the phenomenology of belief and unbelief. Erickson shows how writers developed what he terms "negative theology through narrative," using literary techniques to evoke the sacred through its apparent absence.

The work engages with ongoing debates about secularization theory and the role of literature in mediating religious experience. Against scholars who read modernism as fundamentally atheistic, Erickson argues for a more nuanced understanding of how these texts preserve religious questions even while challenging traditional answers. He positions modernist literature as a crucial site for understanding twentieth-century transformations in religious consciousness, suggesting that aesthetic experience became a compensatory realm for displaced spiritual longings.

This monograph contributes significantly to understanding how cultural productions reflect and shape religious thought. By analyzing the formal strategies through which modernist writers represented divine absence, Erickson illuminates broader patterns in how Western culture has negotiated the perceived retreat of the sacred. The study reveals literature's capacity to sustain theological questioning outside conventional religious frameworks, demonstrating how artistic expression can preserve space for transcendent concerns within ostensibly secular contexts.