The Soul Enchanted is a book about the life of a woman. It starts with a twist. A girl is engaged to a wealthy and credited man, from a noble family. On the verge of the wedding, she deeply questions their relationship and calls it off.

This intellectual portrait of Romain Rolland (1866-1944)--French novelist, musicologist, dramatist, and Nobel prizewinner in 1915--focuses on his experiments with political commitment against the backdrop of European history between the two world wars. Best known as a biographer of Beethoven and for his novel, Jean-Christophe, Rolland was one of those nonconforming writers who perceived a crisis of bourgeois society in Europe before the Great War, and who consciously worked to discredit and reshape that society in the interwar period. Analyzing Rolland's itinerary of engaged stands, David James Fisher clarifies aspects of European cultural history and helps decipher the ambiguities at the heart of all forms of intellectual engagement.Moving from text to context, Fisher organizes the book around a series of debates--Rolland's public and private collisions over specific committed stands--introducing the reader to the polemical style of French intellectual discourse and offering insight into what it means to be a responsible intellectual. Fisher presents Rolland's private ruminations, extensive research, and reexamination of the function and style of the French man of letters. He observes that Rolland experimented with five styles of commitment: oceanic mysticism linked to progressive, democratic politics; free thinking linked to antiwar dissent; pacifism and, ultimately, Gandhism; antifacism linked to anti-imperialism, antiracism, and all-out political resistance to fascism; and, most controversially, fellow traveling as a form of socialist humanism and the positive side of antifascism. Fisher views Rolland's engagement historically and critically, showing that engaged intellectuals of that time were neither naive propagandists nor dupes of political parties.David James Fisher makes a case for the committed writer and hopes to re-ignite the debate about commitment. For him, Romain Rolland sums up engagement in a striking, dialectical formula:

Reproduction of the original: Pierre and Luce by Romain Rolland

Romain Rolland) was a French dramatist, novelist, essayist, art historian and mystic who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915 "as a tribute to the lofty idealism of his literary production and to the sympathy and love of truth with which he has described different types of human beings". He was a leading supporter of Josef Stalin in France and is also noted for his correspondence with and influence on Sigmund Freud. Rolland's most famous novel is the 10-volume novel sequence Jean-Christophe. His other novels are Colas Breugnon, Clérambault, Pierre et Luce and his second roman-fleuve, the 7-volume The Enchanted Soul. 1. Jean-Christophe: - Dawn; - Morning; - Youth; - Revolt; - The Marketplace; - Antoinette; - The House; - Love and Friendship; - The Burning Bush; - The New Dawn 2. The Soul Enchanted: - Annette and Sylvie; - Summer 3. Other Fiction: - Colas Breugnon; - Clerambault; - Pierre and Luce 4. The Plays: - Georges Danton; - The Fourteenth of July 5. The Non-Fiction: - Francois-Millet; - Beethoven; - Life of Michelangelo; - Musicians of To-Day; - Musicians of Former Days; - Handel; - Tolstoy; - The Forerunners; - A Musical Tour through the Land of the Past; - Mahatma Gandhi

Freud can be considered one of the grandparents of the field of religious studies, yet students often assume that Freud is sexist, dangerous, passe, and irrelevent to the study of religion. The contributors to this volume describe how they address Freud's contested legacy.

As one of the first theorists to explore the unconscious fantasies, fears, and desires underlying religious ideas and practices, Freud con be considered one of the grandparents of the field of Religious Studies. Yet his legacy is deeply contested. How can Freud be taught in a climate of critique and controversy? The fourteen contributors to this volume, all recognized scholars of religion and psychoanalysis, describe how they address Freud's contested legacy; they "teach the debates." They go on to describe their courses on Freud and religion, their innovative pedagogical practices, and the creative ways they work with resistance.