The Uses of Obscurity (Routledge Revivals)

White, Allon

ISBN 10: 1032645938 / ISBN 13: 9781032645933

Editore: Routledge, 2023

In. Codice articolo ria9781032645933_new

Riassunto:

Originally published in 1981, this book examines why and how textual difficulty became a norm of modernist literature and questions how we can begin to account for the forms of obscurity and difficulty which developed in the late 19th Century and which became so important to modernism. The author argues that the decline of realism entailed the growth of ‘symptomatic’ or ‘subtextual’ reading which tended to treat fiction as compromised autobiography. This kind of reading left the author dangerously isolated and exposed in the midst of a newly sophisticated public. Within this general cultural perspective, the book traces the private anxieties that led George Meredith, Joseph Conrad and Henry James to conceal themselves within their complex and resistant fictions. It discusses opacity in the texts themselves – embarrassment and shame in Meredith; ‘engimas’ in Conrad; and the fear of vulgarity and knowledge in Henry James.

Informazioni sull'autore:

Allon White

Dati bibliografici

Titolo: The Uses of Obscurity (Routledge Revivals)
Casa editrice: Routledge
Data di pubblicazione: 2023
Legatura: Rilegato
Condizione: New