Writing Against Time

Michael W. Clune

ISBN 10: 0804770824 / ISBN 13: 9780804770828

Editore: Stanford University Press, US, 2013

Riguardo questo articolo

For centuries, a central goal of art has been to make us see the world with new eyes. Thinkers from Edmund Burke to Elaine Scarry have understood this effort as the attempt to create new forms. But as anyone who has ever worn out a song by repeated listening knows, artistic form is hardly immune to sensation-killing habit. Some of our most ambitious writers-Keats, Proust, Nabokov, Ashbery-have been obsessed by this problem. Attempting to create an image that never gets old, they experiment with virtual, ideal forms. Poems and novels become workshops, as fragments of the real world are scrutinized for insights and the shape of an ideal artwork is pieced together. These writers, voracious in their appetite for any knowledge that will further their goal, find help in unlikely places. The logic of totalitarian regimes, the phenomenology of music, the pathology of addiction, and global commodity exchange furnish them with tools and models for arresting neurobiological time. Reading central works of the past two centuries in light of their shared ambition, Clune produces a revisionary understanding of some of our most important literature.

Codice articolo LU-9780804770828

Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: Writing Against Time
• Editore: Stanford University Press, US
• Data di pubblicazione: 2013
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0804770824
• ISBN 13: 9780804770828
• Rilegatura: Paperback
• Condizione: New
• Peso: 386 grammi

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto

For centuries, a central goal of art has been to make us see the world with new eyes. Thinkers from Edmund Burke to Elaine Scarry have understood this effort as the attempt to create new forms. But as anyone who has ever worn out a song by repeated listening knows, artistic form is hardly immune to sensation-killing habit. Some of our most ambitious writers—Keats, Proust, Nabokov, Ashbery—have been obsessed by this problem. Attempting to create an image that never gets old, they experiment with virtual, ideal forms. Poems and novels become workshops, as fragments of the real world are scrutinized for insights and the shape of an ideal artwork is pieced together. These writers, voracious in their appetite for any knowledge that will further their goal, find help in unlikely places. The logic of totalitarian regimes, the phenomenology of music, the pathology of addiction, and global commodity exchange furnish them with tools and models for arresting neurobiological time. Reading central works of the past two centuries in light of their shared ambition, Clune produces a revisionary understanding of some of our most important literature.

Informazioni sull?autore

Michael Clune is Assistant Professor of English at Case Western Reserve University. He is the author of a previous work of criticism, American Literature and the Free Market, and of a forthcoming memoir, White Out.