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| ennui used in literature: Ennui Maria Edgeworth, 2022-04-18 Lord Glenthorn is bored and lacking oomph. But before you feel sorry for him, it is worth knowing that he has a pile of money, a grand title, estates in England and Ireland and no stress. That is until he finds out he is not Lord Glenthorn, the Anglo-Irish earl. He is in fact the peasant Christy O'Donoghoe, which is a fly in the ointment for his efforts to provide for the woman he loves. At the same time, he gets caught up in the violent Irish Rebellion of 1798. Can he shake off the ennui, become a self-made man and win the hand of his love? Those who enjoy Jane Austen's novels, including 'Persuasion', 'Sense and Sensibility', and 'Pride and Prejudice', will love 'Ennui'. Like Austen, Maria Edgeworth has a gift for gently exposing the hypocrisy and accidental comedy of Britain's 19th century upper-middle class. First published in 1809, 'Ennui' is a didactic novel, which means it aims to teach the reader a moral lesson - like 'Aesop's Fables'. The Irish writer Maria Edgeworth (1768-1849) was highly regarded in her day as a pioneer of early 19th century fiction and children's literature. A friend of the novelist Sir Walter Scott ('Ivanhoe', 'Rob Roy'), she was active and vocal about political and estate reform. Today, she is rather underappreciated - and overshadowed - by other 19th century satirical novelists like Jane Austen and Anthony Trollope. A prolific writer, Edgeworth's best-known works include 'Ennui', 'The Dun' and 'Belinda', which was controversial in its day for featuring inter-racial marriage. |
| ennui used in literature: The Demon of Noontide Reinhard Clifford Kuhn, 2017-03-14 Kierkegaard claimed that the gods created man because they were bored, and Baudelaire predicted that the delicate monster of boredom would one day swallow up the whole world in an immense yawn. Between these two statements lies the undefined expanse of ennui, whose manifestations in European literature form the fascinating subject of this book. Reinhard Kuhn's aim is to define the demon of noontide, to learn how writers through the ages have treated it, and to discover what it indicates about the nature of the creative act. Originally published in 1976. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. |
| ennui used in literature: Boredom Patricia Meyer Spacks, 1995 This book offers a witty explanation of why boredom both haunts and motivates the literary imagination. Moving from Samuel Johnson to Donald Barthelme, from Jane Austen to Anita Brookner, Spacks shows us at last how we arrived in a postmodern world where boredom is the all-encompassing name we give our discontent. Her book, anything but boring, gives us new insight into the cultural usefulness—and deep interest—of boredom as a state of mind. |
| ennui used in literature: Worrying Francis O'Gorman, 2015-05-21 Worrying: A Literary and Cultural History suggests a unique approach to the inner lifeand its ordinary pains. Francis O'Gorman charts the emergence of our contemporaryidea of worry in the Victorian era and its establishment, after the First World War,as a feature of modernity. For some writers between the Wars, worry was the diseaseof the age. Worrying examines the everyday kind of worry-the fearful, non-pathological, andusually hidden questioning about uncertain futures. It shows worry to be a naturalcompanion in a world where we try to live by reason and believe we have the right tochoose, finding in the worrier a peculiarly contemporary sufferer whose mental lifeis not only exceptionally familiar, but also deeply strange. Offering an intimately personal account of an all-too-common human experience, and of a word that slips in and out of ordinary conversation so often that it has become invisible in its familiarity,Worrying explores how the modern world has shaped our everyday anxieties. |
| ennui used in literature: Ashenden W. Somerset Maugham, 2023-01-01T20:46:22Z During World War I W. Somerset Maugham, already by then an established playwright and author, was recruited to be a British intelligence agent. These stories reflect his wartime experiences in intelligence gathering. Though fictionalized, they managed to retain enough authentic elements for Winston Churchill to advise Maugham that their publication might be a violation of the Official Secrets Act, resulting in the author burning an additional 14 stories. Set in various locales across the continent, these remaining Ashenden stories are a precursor to the jet-setting spy novels of the 1950s and 1960s. Maugham is known as a master short story writer and these stories are no exception, combining wit and realism to create memorable characters in a unique and highly critical portrait of wartime espionage. Initially released to a mixed reception—with an early review by D. H. Lawrence being especially scathing—Ashenden has since been credited as an inspiration for numerous authors, including John Le Carré, Graham Greene, and Raymond Chandler. The latter in particular was especially impressed, writing in 1950, “There are no other great spy stories—none at all. I have been searching and I know.” This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks. |
| ennui used in literature: Boredom Peter Toohey, 2011-01-01 In the first book to argue for the benefits of boredom, Peter Toohey dispels the myth that it's simply a childish emotion or an existential malaise like Jean-Paul Sartre's nausea. He shows how boredom is, in fact, one of our most common and constructive emotions and is an essential part of the human experience. This informative and entertaining investigation of boredom--what it is and what it isn't, its uses and its dangers--spans more than 3,000 years of history and takes readers through fascinating neurological and psychological theories of emotion, as well as recent scientific investigations, to illustrate its role in our lives. There are Australian aboriginals and bored Romans, Jeffrey Archer and caged cockatoos, Camus and the early Christians, Durer and Degas. Toohey also explores the important role that boredom plays in popular and highbrow culture and how over the centuries it has proven to be a stimulus for art and literature. Toohey shows that boredom is a universal emotion experienced by humans throughout history and he explains its place, and value, in today's world. Boredom: A Lively History is vital reading for anyone interested in what goes on when supposedly nothing happens. |
| ennui used in literature: Modernism, Feminism and the Culture of Boredom Allison Pease, 2012-08-27 Illustrates how boredom formed an important category of critique against the constraints of women's lives in British modernist literature. |
| ennui used in literature: Experience Without Qualities Elizabeth S. Goodstein, 2005 Tracing the emergence and evolution of the modern discourse on boredom in French and German literary, philosophical, and sociological texts, this book fills a gap in the intellectual and cultural history of European modernity. |
| ennui used in literature: A Philosophy of Boredom Lars Svendsen, 2005-04-15 Am account of boredom, something that we have all suffered from, yet actually know very little about. |
| ennui used in literature: The New Me Halle Butler, 2019-03-05 [A] definitive work of millennial literature . . . wretchedly riveting. —Jia Tolentino, The New Yorker “Girls + Office Space + My Year of Rest and Relaxation + anxious sweating = The New Me.” —Entertainment Weekly I'm still trying to make the dream possible: still might finish my cleaning project, still might sign up for that yoga class, still might, still might. I step into the shower and almost faint, an image of taking the day by the throat and bashing its head against the wall floating in my mind. Thirty-year-old Millie just can't pull it together. She spends her days working a thankless temp job and her nights alone in her apartment, fixating on all the ways she might change her situation--her job, her attitude, her appearance, her life. Then she watches TV until she falls asleep, and the cycle begins again. When the possibility of a full-time job offer arises, it seems to bring the better life she's envisioning within reach. But with it also comes the paralyzing realization, lurking just beneath the surface, of how hollow that vision has become. Wretchedly riveting (The New Yorker) and masterfully cringe-inducing (Chicago Tribune), The New Me is the must-read new novel by National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree and Granta Best Young American novelist Halle Butler. Named a Best Book of the Decade by Vox, and a Best Book of 2019 by Vanity Fair, Vulture, Chicago Tribune, Mashable, Bustle, and NPR |
| ennui used in literature: At Least We Can Apologize Lee Ki-ho, 2013-09-26 This story focuses on an agency whose only purpose is to offer apologies—for a fee—on behalf of its clients. This seemingly insignificant service leads us into an examination of sin, guilt, and the often irrational demands of society. A kaleidoscope of minor nuisances and major grievances, this novel heralds a new comic voice in Korean letters. |
| ennui used in literature: The Culture of Boredom , 2020-04-28 The Culture of Boredom is a collection of essays by well-known specialists reflecting from philosophical, literary, and artistic perspectives, in which the reader will learn how different disciplines can throw light on such an appealing, challenging, yet still not fully understood, phenomenon. The goal is to clarify the background of boredom, and to explore its representation through forgotten cross-cutting narratives beyond the typical approaches, i.e. those of psychology or psychiatry. For the first time this experienced group of scholars gathers to promote a cross-border dialogue from a multidisciplinary perspective. |
| ennui used in literature: Reading Like a Writer Francine Prose, 2012-04-01 In her entertaining and edifying New York Times bestseller, acclaimed author Francine Prose invites you to sit by her side and take a guided tour of the tools and tricks of the masters to discover why their work has endured. Written with passion, humour and wisdom, Reading Like a Writer will inspire readers to return to literature with a fresh eye and an eager heart – to take pleasure in the long and magnificent sentences of Philip Roth and the breathtaking paragraphs of Isaac Babel; to look to John le Carré for a lesson in how to advance plot through dialogue and to Flannery O’ Connor for the cunning use of the telling detail; to be inspired by Emily Brontë ’ s structural nuance and Charles Dickens’ s deceptively simple narrative techniques. Most importantly, Prose cautions readers to slow down and pay attention to words, the raw material out of which all literature is crafted, and reminds us that good writing comes out of good reading. |
| ennui used in literature: Shyness and Dignity Dag Solstad, 2011-08-31 Nothing in Elias' measured life, in his whole career as a teacher of literature, in his marriage to the 'indescribably beautiful' Eva, foreshadowed the events of that apparently ordinary day. He makes sure he has his headache pills and leaves for work as he has done every morning for the past twenty-five years. He is only too familiar with his pupils' hostile attitude both to his lectures and to himself, but today he feels their impatience, their oafishness, more painfully than ever before and, after their ritually dismissive and bored response to his passionate lecture on Ibsen's The Wild Duck, he reaches a point of crisis. Elegant, pocket-sized paperbacks, VINTAGE Editions celebrate the audacity and ambition of the written word, transporting readers to wherever in the world literary innovation may be found. |
| ennui used in literature: The Empty Canvas Alberto Moravia, 1961 |
| ennui used in literature: On Boredom Rye Dag Holmboe , Susan Morris , 2021-04-22 What do we mean when we say that we are bored? Or when we find a subject boring? Contributors to On Boredom: Essays in art and writing, which include artists, art historians, psychoanalysts and a novelist, examine boredom in its manifold and uncertain reality. Each part of the book takes up a crucial moment in the history of boredom and presents it in a new light, taking the reader from the trials of the consulting room to the experience of hysteria in the nineteenth century. The book pays particular attention to boredom’s relationship with the sudden and rapid advances in technology that have occurred in recent decades, specifically technologies of communication, surveillance and automation. On Boredom is idiosyncratic for its combination of image and text, and the artworks included in its pages – by Mathew Hale, Martin Creed and Susan Morris – help turn this volume into a material expression of boredom itself. With other contributions from Josh Cohen, Briony Fer, Anouchka Grose, Rye Dag Holmboe, Margaret Iversen, Tom McCarthy and Michael Newman, the book will appeal to readers in the fields of art history, literature, cultural studies and visual culture, from undergraduate students to professional artists working in new media. |
| ennui used in literature: First World Problems in an Age of Terrorism and Ennui Dominic Peloso, 2012-09 Peloso tells the existential struggles of a Gen-X would-be revolutionary/terrorist who is frustrated that he can't find a greater purpose or a cause worth fighting for. Set in D.C. between the WTO protests in 2000 and the attacks of 9/11, the protagonist dreams of a major attack, just to shake up the status quo. But when 9/11 unfolds, he is forced to reassess his goals and what is important in his life. |
| ennui used in literature: Going Dutch James Gregor, 2020-07-21 ONE OF ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY’S 10 BEST DEBUT NOVELS OF THE YEAR “A charming, well-observed debut,” (NPR) featuring a gay male graduate student who falls for his brilliant female classmate, “you’ll tear through this tale of a thoroughly modern love triangle” (Entertainment Weekly). Exhausted by dead-end forays in the gay dating scene, surrounded constantly by friends but deeply lonely in New York City, and drifting into academic abyss, twenty-something graduate student Richard has plenty of sources of anxiety. But at the forefront is his crippling writer’s block, which threatens daily to derail his graduate funding and leave Richard poor, directionless, and desperately single. Enter Anne: his brilliant classmate who offers to “help” Richard write his papers in exchange for his company, despite Richard’s fairly obvious sexual orientation. Still, he needs her help, and it doesn’t hurt that Anne has folded Richard into her abundant lifestyle. What begins as an initially transactional relationship blooms gradually into something more complex. But then a one-swipe-stand with an attractive, successful lawyer named Blake becomes serious, and Richard suddenly finds himself unable to detach from Anne, entangled in her web of privilege, brilliance, and, oddly, her unabashed acceptance of Richard’s flaws. As the two relationships reach points of serious commitment, Richard soon finds himself on a romantic and existential collision course—one that brings about surprising revelations. “Intelligent, entertaining and elegantly written” (Adelle Waldman, author of The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.) Going Dutch is an incisive portrait of relationships in an age of digital romantic abundance, but it’s also a heartfelt and humorous exploration of love and sexuality, and a poignant meditation on the things emotionally ravenous people seek from and do to each other. “This marvelously witty take on dating in New York City and the blurry nature of desire announces Gregor as a fresh, electric new voice” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). |
| ennui used in literature: The Drowned World: A Novel (50th Anniversary Edition) J. G. Ballard, 2012-07-23 From one of the most powerful and original talents in science fiction comes the story of a new world--a strange world where solar radiation fluctuations have melted the polar ice caps, flooding the land and raising the temperature of the atmosphere. |
| ennui used in literature: I Love Dollars and Other Stories of China Wen Zhu, 2007 In five richly imaginative novellas and a short story, Zhu Wen depicts the violence, chaos, and dark comedy of China in the post-Mao era. A frank reflection of the seamier side of his nation's increasingly capitalist society, Zhu Wen's fiction offers an audaciously plainspoken account of the often hedonistic individualism that is feverishly taking root. Set against the mundane landscapes of contemporary China-a worn Yangtze River vessel, cheap diners, a failing factory, a for-profit hospital operating by dated socialist norms-Zhu Wen's stories zoom in on the often tragicomic minutiae of everyday life in this fast-changing country. With subjects ranging from provincial mafiosi to nightmarish families and oppressed factory workers, his claustrophobic narratives depict a spiritually bankrupt society, periodically rocked by spasms of uncontrolled violence. For example, I Love Dollars, a story about casual sex in a provincial city whose caustic portrayal of numb disillusionment and cynicism, caused an immediate sensation in the Chinese literary establishment when it was first published. The novella's loose, colloquial voice and sharp focus on the indignity and iniquity of a society trapped between communism and capitalism showcase Zhu Wen's exceptional ability to make literary sense of the bizarre, ideologically confused amalgam that is contemporary China. Julia Lovell's fluent translation deftly reproduces Zhu Wen's wry sense of humor and powerful command of detail and atmosphere. The first book-length publication of Zhu Wen's fiction in English, I Love Dollars and Other Stories of China offers readers access to a trailblazing author and marks a major contribution to Chinese literature in English. |
| ennui used in literature: Boredom, Self, and Culture Seán Desmond Healy, 1984 This study in social and cultural history argues that what the author identifies as hyperboredom--the sense that all possibilities are equally valueless--has grown into a major cultural force as a result of the abandonment of traditional sources of meaning. |
| ennui used in literature: Dangling Man Saul Bellow, 2013-04-04 Expecting to be inducted into the army, Joseph has given up his job and carefully prepared for his departure to the battlefront. When a series of mix-ups delays his induction, he finds himself facing a year of idleness. Dangling Man is his journal, a wonderful account of his restless wanderings through Chicago's streets, his musings on the past, his psychological reaction to his inactivity while war rages around him, and his uneasy insights into the nature of freedom and choice. |
| ennui used in literature: Out of My Skull James Danckert, John D. Eastwood, 2020-06-09 A Behavioral Scientist Notable Book of the Year A Guardian “Best Book about Ideas” of the Year No one likes to be bored. Two leading psychologists explain what causes boredom and how to listen to what it is telling you, so you can live a more engaged life. We avoid boredom at all costs. It makes us feel restless and agitated. Desperate for something to do, we play games on our phones, retie our shoes, or even count ceiling tiles. And if we escape it this time, eventually it will strike again. But what if we listened to boredom instead of banishing it? Psychologists James Danckert and John Eastwood contend that boredom isn’t bad for us. It’s just that we do a bad job of heeding its guidance. When we’re bored, our minds are telling us that whatever we are doing isn’t working—we’re failing to satisfy our basic psychological need to be engaged and effective. Too many of us respond poorly. We become prone to accidents, risky activities, loneliness, and ennui, and we waste ever more time on technological distractions. But, Danckert and Eastwood argue, we can let boredom have the opposite effect, motivating the change we need. The latest research suggests that an adaptive approach to boredom will help us avoid its troubling effects and, through its reminder to become aware and involved, might lead us to live fuller lives. Out of My Skull combines scientific findings with everyday observations to explain an experience we’d like to ignore, but from which we have a lot to learn. Boredom evolved to help us. It’s time we gave it a chance. |
| ennui used in literature: Boredom and Academic Work Mariusz Finkielsztein, 2021-07-30 Introducing the notion of boredom into the academic context, Boredom and Academic Work proposes a fresh sociological perspective on boredom and academic work alike. It invites a reader to reflect on the essence of boredom and the nature of academic work from the sociological perspective. It constitutes methodological and conceptual guidance for all those interested in their own emotions both at work and outside. It also provides an original, interactional and essential definition of boredom and a novel standpoint for observing academic work, both in its systemic and practical level, and shows how the academic system influences its subjects' well-being, motivation, emotions, and practices. Covering various approaches from the qualitative methodology, linguistics, sociology of work, emotions, and higher education, and telling a story of research and teaching university staff, the book will be of interest to researchers in a broad range of areas and the general academic public as well. |
| ennui used in literature: Machines in the Head Anna Kavan, 2020-02-18 Enter the strange and haunting world of Anna Kavan, author of mind-bending stories that blend science fiction and the author's own harrowing experiences with drug addiction, in this new collection of her best short stories. Anna Kavan is one of the great originals of twentieth-century fiction, comparable to Leonora Carrington and Jean Rhys, a writer whose stories explored the inner world of her imagination and plumbed the depths of her long addiction to heroin. This new selection of Kavan’s stories gathers the best work from across the many decades of her career, including oblique and elegiac tales of breakdown and institutionalization from Asylum Piece (1940), moving evocations of wartime from I Am Lazarus (1945), fantastic and surrealist pieces from A Bright Green Field (1958), and stories of addiction from Julia and the Bazooka (1970). Kavan’s turn to science fiction in her final novel, Ice, is reflected in her late stories, while “Starting a Career,” about a mercenary dealer of state secrets, is published here for the first time. Kavan experimented throughout her writing career with results that are moving, funny, bizarre, poignant, often unsettling, always unique. Machines in the Head offers American readers the first full overview of the work of a fearless and dazzling literary explorer. |
| ennui used in literature: Melville and the Theme of Boredom Daniel Paliwoda, 2010-01-13 Boredom is a prevalent theme in Herman Melville's works. Rather than a passing fancy or a device for drawing attention to the action that also permeates his work, boredom is central to the writings, the author argues. He contends that in Melville's mature work, especially Moby Dick, boredom presents itself as an insidious presence in the lives of Melville's characters, until it matures from being a mere killer of time into a killer of souls. |
| ennui used in literature: I Would Prefer Not To Herman Melville, 2021-10-26 A new selection of Melville's darkest and most enthralling stories in a beautiful Pushkin Collection edition Includes Bartleby, the Scrivener, Benito Cereno and The Lightning-Rod Man A lawyer hires a new copyist, only to be met with stubborn, confounding resistance. A nameless guide discovers hidden worlds of luxury and bleak exploitation. After boarding a beleaguered Spanish slave ship, an American trader's cheerful outlook is repeatedly shadowed by paralyzing unease. In these stories of the surreal mundanity of office life and obscure tensions at sea, Melville's darkly modern sensibility plunges us into a world of irony and mystery, where nothing is as it first appears. |
| ennui used in literature: An Oasis of Horror in a Desert of Boredom Jonathan Russell Clark, 2018 Does Bolaño's masterpiece hint at his own life, or is the author himself a literary invention? Literary Nonfiction. After Devouring 2666 by Roberto Bola�o on the New York City subway, Jonathan Russell Clark does what any good literary critic would do�he reads everything by Bola�o he can get his hands on. But the more he learns about the writer's unlikely life, the less it makes sense. Bola�o cultivated ambiguities and false identities, almost as if he were laying a trap for his future biographers. Clark's investigation into Bola�o's magnum opus is a stumble through a labyrinth where fiction and self-mythologizing converge. This book is part of a new series from Fiction Advocate called Afterwords. A Sontag-worthy encapsulation of another writer.--Christopher Wood, The Quarterly Conversation If you have read 2666 and loved it, like most people who've read 2666, then AN OASIS OF HORROR IN A DESERT OF BOREDOM is something of a must-read.--D. F. Lovett |
| ennui used in literature: Ugly Feelings Sianne Ngai, 2009-07-01 Envy, irritation, paranoia—in contrast to powerful and dynamic negative emotions like anger, these non-cathartic states of feeling are associated with situations in which action is blocked or suspended. In her examination of the cultural forms to which these affects give rise, Sianne Ngai suggests that these minor and more politically ambiguous feelings become all the more suited for diagnosing the character of late modernity. Along with her inquiry into the aesthetics of unprestigious negative affects such as irritation, envy, and disgust, Ngai examines a racialized affect called “animatedness,” and a paradoxical synthesis of shock and boredom called “stuplimity.” She explores the politically equivocal work of these affective concepts in the cultural contexts where they seem most at stake, from academic feminist debates to the Harlem Renaissance, from late-twentieth-century American poetry to Hollywood film and network television. Through readings of Herman Melville, Nella Larsen, Sigmund Freud, Alfred Hitchcock, Gertrude Stein, Ralph Ellison, John Yau, and Bruce Andrews, among others, Ngai shows how art turns to ugly feelings as a site for interrogating its own suspended agency in the affirmative culture of a market society, where art is tolerated as essentially unthreatening. Ngai mobilizes the aesthetics of ugly feelings to investigate not only ideological and representational dilemmas in literature—with a particular focus on those inflected by gender and race—but also blind spots in contemporary literary and cultural criticism. Her work maps a major intersection of literary studies, media and cultural studies, feminist studies, and aesthetic theory. |
| ennui used in literature: The Cambridge Handbook of Motivation and Learning K. Ann Renninger, Suzanne E. Hidi, 2019-02-14 Written by leading researchers in educational and social psychology, learning science, and neuroscience, this edited volume is suitable for a wide-academic readership. It gives definitions of key terms related to motivation and learning alongside developed explanations of significant findings in the field. It also presents cohesive descriptions concerning how motivation relates to learning, and produces a novel and insightful combination of issues and findings from studies of motivation and/or learning across the authors' collective range of scientific fields. The authors provide a variety of perspectives on motivational constructs and their measurement, which can be used by multiple and distinct scientific communities, both basic and applied. |
| ennui used in literature: Castle Rackrent Maria Edgeworth, 1903 |
| ennui used in literature: Terminal Boredom Izumi Suzuki, 2021-04-20 On a planet where men are contained in ghettoised isolation, women enjoy the fruits of a queer matriarchal utopia -- until a boy escapes and a young woman's perception of the world is violently interupted. Two old friends enjoy cocktails on a holiday resort planet where all is not as it seems. A bickering couple emigrate to a world that has worked out an innovative way to side-step the need for war, only to bring their quarrels (and something far more destructive) with them. And in the title story, Suzuki offers readers a tragic and warped mirroring of her own final days as the tyranny of enforced screen-time and the mechanistion of labour bring about a shattering psychic collapse. At turns nonchalantly hip and charmingly deranged, Suzuki's singular slant on speculative fiction would be echoed in countless later works, from Margaret Atwood and Harumi Murakami, to Black Mirror and Ex Machina. In these darkly playful and punky stories, the fantastical elements are always earthed by the universal pettiness of strife between the sexes, and the gritty reality of life on the lower rungs, whatever planet that ladder might be on. |
| ennui used in literature: What Happens When Nothing Happens Greice Schneider, 2016-06-30 Boredom and melancholy in the experience of reading Contemporary graphic novels show an interesting shift from the extraordinary to the ordinary in slice-of-life stories in which nothing happens. Present-day graphic accounts are inhabited by melancholic characters whining about the lack of meaning in life. This book examines this intriguing transition and brings a historical, aesthetical and narratological approach to comics in which boredom is not only a topic, but also awakens a deliberate affective response in the very experience of reading. This volume brings together close readings of work by Lewis Trondheim, Chris Ware and Adrian Tomine. With a foreword by Raphäel Baroni (University of Lausanne). |
| ennui used in literature: Towards a General Theory of Boredom , 2022-04-29 This book offers a novel theory explaining the emergence of boredom in modernity. Presenting a Durkheimian topology of cross-cultural boredom, it grounds the sociological cause of boredom in anomie and the perception of time, and compares its development through case studies in Anglo and Russian society. |
| ennui used in literature: The World Without Us Alan Weisman, 2008-08-05 A penetrating take on how our planet would respond without the relentless pressure of the human presence |
| ennui used in literature: Walter Sickert Virginia Woolf, 2005 As well as being one of the greatest novelists in the English language, Virginia Woolf was also a prolific essayist. In Walter Sickert: A Conversation (first published in 1934), Woolf argues for a close connection between the visual arts and literature and for Sickert's pre-eminence among living painters. The essay takes us behind the scenes at a dinner party among liiterary friends who have recently attended a Sickert exhibition. The language employed is vivid and quite unlike conventional art criticism. One, on entering the show, became all eye. I flew from colour to colour, from red to blue, from yellow to green. Colours went spirally through my body lighting a flare as if a rocket fell through the night... Another argues that Sickert's skills as a portraitist make him a great biographer...When he paints a portrait I read a life Another argues that He is more of a novelist than a biographer... He likes to set his characters in motion, to see them in action. On one thing they all agree: Sickert is probably the best painter now living in England. since its original publication, this new edition features the original cover artwork, a charming pen-and-ink drawing by Virginia Woolf's sister, the artist Vanessa Bell. |
| ennui used in literature: Suicide Edouard Levé, 2025-07-29 Suicide cannot be read as simply another novel—it is, in a sense, the author’s own oblique, public suicide note, a unique meditation on this most extreme of refusals. Presenting itself as an investigation into the suicide of a close friend—perhaps real, perhaps fictional—more than twenty years earlier, Levé gives us, little by little, a striking portrait of a man, with all his talents and flaws, who chose to reject his life, and all the people who loved him, in favor of oblivion. Gradually, through Levé’s casually obsessive, pointillist, beautiful ruminations, we come to know a stoic, sensible, thoughtful man who bears more than a slight psychological resemblance to Levé himself. But Suicide is more than just a compendium of memories of an old friend; it is a near-exhaustive catalog of the ramifications and effects of the act of suicide, and a unique and melancholy farewell to life. |
| ennui used in literature: Submission Michel Houellebecq, 2016-09-08 As the 2022 French Presidential election looms, two candidates emerge as favourites: Marine Le Pen of the Front National, and the charismatic Muhammed Ben Abbes of the growing Muslim Fraternity. Forming a controversial alliance with the political left to block the Front National’s alarming ascendency, Ben Abbes sweeps to power, and overnight the country is transformed. This proves to be the death knell of French secularism, as Islamic law comes into force: women are veiled, polygamy is encouraged and, for our narrator François – misanthropic, middle-aged and alienated – life is set on a new course. Submission is a devastating satire, comic and melancholy by turns, and a profound meditation on faith and meaning in Western society. |
| ennui used in literature: Everyone's Burning Ian Spiegelman, 2004-06-08 A young man without prospects finds his place in the universe--as a young woman's slave. As life becomes a waking nightmare spent fighting with police, predators, and the law-abiding, unscarred citizens he dismisses as normals, Koch drives relentlessly toward a fantasy zone. What he finds is a fetishistic realm of worship and ritual where people are never quite certain whether they're role-playing or getting played by their roles. |
| ennui used in literature: The Running Boy and Other Stories Megumu Sagisawa, 2020-04-15 With this newly translated version of The Running Boy, the fiction of Megumu Sagisawa makes its long-overdue first appearance in English. Lovingly rendered with a critical introduction by the translator, this collection of three stories, written in 1989, sits on the thinnest part of Japan's economic bubble and provides and cautionary glimpse into the malaise of its impending collapse. From the aging regulars of a shabby snack bar in Galactic City to the mental breakdowns of A Slender Back, and the family secrets lurking within the title story between them, Sagisawa offers a trilogy of laser-focused character studies. Exploring dichotomies of past versus present, young versus old, life versus death, and countless shades of meaning beyond, she elicits vibrant commonalities of the human condition from some of its most ennui-laden examples. A curious form of affirmation awaits her readers, who may just come out of her monochromatic word paintings with more colorful realizations about themselves and the world at large. Such insight is rare in a writer so young, and this book is a fitting testament to her premature death, the legacy of which is sure to inspire a new generation of readers in the post-truth era. |
ENNUI Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
The meaning of ENNUI is a feeling of weariness and dissatisfaction : boredom. How to use ennui in a sentence. Did you know?
ENNUI | English meaning - Cambridge Dictionary
ENNUI definition: 1. a feeling of being bored and mentally tired caused by having nothing interesting or exciting to…. Learn more.
Ennui: an Emotional State You've Experienced but Didn’t Know ...
Oct 20, 2019 · Ennui (pronounced on-we) is a word we’ve stolen from the French language and literally translates to “Boredom” in English. While the translation is quite simple though, the …
ennui - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
May 15, 2025 · ennui (countable and uncountable, plural ennuis) A gripping listlessness or melancholia caused by boredom; depression.
Ennui: How to Overcome Chronic Boredom – Effectiviology
Ennui (pronounced on-wee) is chronic boredom that involves weariness, apathy, dissatisfaction, and lack of fulfillment. Some people experience a general sense of ennui in life, whereas …
Ennui - Definition, Meaning & Synonyms - Vocabulary.com
The French word ennui describes a feeling that combines tiredness and boredom. Ennui is one version of "the blahs." Though it sounds a little fancy — maybe because it comes from French …
ENNUI definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary
A feeling of listlessness and general dissatisfaction resulting from lack of activity or.... Click for English pronunciations, examples sentences, video.
ennui noun - Definition, pictures, pronunciation and usage ...
Definition of ennui noun in Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary. Meaning, pronunciation, picture, example sentences, grammar, usage notes, synonyms and more.
ENNUI Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com
Put simply, ennui is a French word that describes feelings associated with boredom. Ennui definition: a feeling of utter weariness and discontent resulting from satiety or lack of interest; …
Ennui - definition of ennui by The Free Dictionary
Define ennui. ennui synonyms, ennui pronunciation, ennui translation, English dictionary definition of ennui. n. Listlessness and dissatisfaction resulting from lack of interest; boredom: "The …
ENNUI Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
The meaning of ENNUI is a feeling of weariness and dissatisfaction : boredom. How to use ennui in a sentence. Did you know?
ENNUI | English meaning - Cambridge Dictionary
ENNUI definition: 1. a feeling of being bored and mentally tired caused by having nothing interesting or exciting to…. Learn more.
Ennui: an Emotional State You've Experienced but Didn’t Know ...
Oct 20, 2019 · Ennui (pronounced on-we) is a word we’ve stolen from the French language and literally translates to “Boredom” in English. While the translation is quite simple though, the …
ennui - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
May 15, 2025 · ennui (countable and uncountable, plural ennuis) A gripping listlessness or melancholia caused by boredom; depression.
Ennui: How to Overcome Chronic Boredom – Effectiviology
Ennui (pronounced on-wee) is chronic boredom that involves weariness, apathy, dissatisfaction, and lack of fulfillment. Some people experience a general sense of ennui in life, whereas …
Ennui - Definition, Meaning & Synonyms - Vocabulary.com
The French word ennui describes a feeling that combines tiredness and boredom. Ennui is one version of "the blahs." Though it sounds a little fancy — maybe because it comes from French …
ENNUI definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary
A feeling of listlessness and general dissatisfaction resulting from lack of activity or.... Click for English pronunciations, examples sentences, video.
ennui noun - Definition, pictures, pronunciation and usage ...
Definition of ennui noun in Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary. Meaning, pronunciation, picture, example sentences, grammar, usage notes, synonyms and more.
ENNUI Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com
Put simply, ennui is a French word that describes feelings associated with boredom. Ennui definition: a feeling of utter weariness and discontent resulting from satiety or lack of interest; …
Ennui - definition of ennui by The Free Dictionary
Define ennui. ennui synonyms, ennui pronunciation, ennui translation, English dictionary definition of ennui. n. Listlessness and dissatisfaction resulting from lack of interest; boredom: "The …
