Fictions of Autonomy: Modernism from Wilde to de Man - Rilegato

Goldstone, Andrew

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0199861129 ISBN 13: 9780199861125

Casa editrice: OUP USA, 2013

Riassunto

No aspect of modernist literature has attracted more passionate defenses, or more furious denunciations, than its affinity for the idea of autonomy. A belief in art as a law unto itself is central to the work of many writers from the late nineteenth century to the present. But is this belief just a way of denying art's social contexts, its roots in the lives of its creators, its political and ethical obligations?

Fictions of Autonomy argues that the concept of autonomy is, on the contrary, essential for understanding modernism historically. Disputing the prevailing skepticism about autonomy, Andrew Goldstone shows that the pursuit of relative independence within society is modernism's distinctive way of relating to its contexts. Goldstone examines an expansive modernist field in fiction, poetry, and theory--Oscar Wilde, J.-K. Huysmans, Henry James, Marcel Proust, T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, Wallace Stevens, Djuna Barnes, Theodor Adorno, Paul de Man--in order to reveal an ever-shifting preoccupation with autonomy. Drawing on Bourdieu's sociology, formalist reading, and historical contextualization, this book demonstrates the importance of autonomy to modernist themes as varied as domestic service, artistic aging, expat life, and non-referentiality.
Nothing less than an argument for a wholesale revision of the assumptions of modernist studies, Fictions of Autonomy is also an intervention in literary theory. This book shows why anyone interested in literary history, the sociology of culture, and aesthetics needs to take account of the social, stylistic, and political significance of the problem, and the potential, of autonomy.

Su questo libro

Informazioni sull?autore

Andrew Goldstone is Assistant Professor of English at Rutgers University.

Dettagli dell?edizione

• Editore: OUP USA
• Data di pubblicazione: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0199861129
• ISBN 13: 9780199861125
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Lingua: Inglese
• Numero di pagine: 224
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile