A literature of modern suffering : suffering in the work of Feodor Dostoevsky, Albert Camus and Milan Kundera

This thesis examines the treatment of the theme of suffering by three modern authors: Feodor Dostoevsky, Albert Camus, and Milan Kundera. The analysis proceeds through the identification and examination of three primary concepts which I will argue are at the heart of their work, and which provide the conceptual foundations for their depictions of suffering: the wretched, the absurd, and the banal. These concepts will be used as an avenue through which to explore and articulate their treatment of suffering. It will be argued further that the work of these three authors forms a conceptual series, in that each contributes in an important way to the evolution of a modern secular way of thinking about suffering by producing portraits of suffering informed by concepts appropriate to specific moments in the modern era. The sense of wretchedness which emerges from Dostoevsky’s work is inextricably linked with the late nineteenth-century crisis-of-faith. The concept of the absurd ties Camus to the early-twentieth-century existentialist tradition, while the sense of banality in Kundera’s novels locates him in an era which has witnessed both the horrors of World War Two and the decline in the humanist tradition. The factor that unites them and gives order to their differences, however, is a common concern with questions of meaning. The loss of meaning in the modern era, and in particular the loss of meaning in relation to suffering, is a thread which develops progressively throughout the series. It is, as will be argued at the outset, what binds these three disparate authors together and what gives their work and their treatment of suffering a particular modern character