In late nineteenth-century France, the pessimist philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and Eduard von Hartmann was often portrayed as a disease-like force infecting the French body politic. For many French writers, however, German philosophy’s ‘otherness’ was a source of fascination, and foremost among them was Jules Laforgue. This monograph, the first full-length study of Laforgue in English for 25 years, reveals how Laforgue’s formative encounter with Schopenhauer and Hartmann was crucially informed by ideas of otherness, ideas that were associated not only with their work but also with German culture in general, and with the Eastern thought that both philosophers drew on. Through close textual analysis, the book shows how Laforgue’s dynamic engagement with philosophical thought - manifest in his highly innovative verse as well as his unpublished notes - is bound up with a challenge to nationalistic thinking.

Sam Bootle is an Assistant Professor in French Studies at the University of Durham.