Culture Writing by Tim Watson

Culture Writing by Tim Watson

Culture Writing argues that the period of decolonization witnessed dynamic exchanges between writers and anthropologists on both sides of the Atlantic. Watson analyzes writers who engaged professionally with anthropology--Barbara Pym, Ursula Le Guin, Saul Bellow, Edouard Glissant-and anthropologists who adopted literary forms--Laura Bohannan, Michel Leiris, and Claude Levi-Strauss.

"Full of splendid insight and erudition, Culture Writing offers a new way to understand the cross-pollination of literature and anthropologyBy centering his story in the era of decolonization, Tim Watson shows how the 'literary turn' in anthropology caught fire not in the era of high theory but in an earlier moment when a wide radius of novelists, thinkers, and ethnographers--with women in the vanguard--merged political and creative energies in powerful new ways. Watson has written a truly accomplished and important book." --Nancy Bentley, University of Pennsylvania "With its wealth of historically-grounded close readings from the neglected midcentury, Culture Writing makes original and noteworthy contributions to Anglophone and Francophone twentieth-century literary studies, to the history of anthropology, and to studies tracking the relationship between these disciplines. Encompassing writings from the US, the UK, France, and the Caribbean, with glances toward writings from Nigeria, South Africa, and India, the book covers an impressively broad geographical range. Through the use of archival materials like notebooks, manuscript drafts, and letters, Watson makes such a convincing case that it is surprising that critics have neglected this dimension of midcentury literature until now." --Carey Snyder, Ohio University "This brilliant new history of the decolonizing of metropolitan anthropology also gives us smart exegetical turns on writers who have never had their critical due (Barbara Pym), who have remained somewhat boxed in the bin of genre fiction (Ursula Le Guin), who have been understood as social scientists rather than creative minds (Laura Bohannan and Michel Leiris), or who have fallen out of favor as novelists (Saul Bellow) or theorists (Édouard Glissant). Watson redefines the north-south problematics of postwar fiction in a single, decisive, and authoritative stroke." --Jed Esty, University of Pennsylvania

Tim Watson is Associate Professor of English at the University of Miami and the author of Caribbean Culture and British Fiction in the Atlantic World, 1780-1870 (2008).

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780190852672
ISBN 10	0190852674
Title	Culture Writing
Author	Tim Watson
Series	Modernist Literature And Culture
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Oxford University Press Inc
Year published	2018-03-22
Number of pages	240
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.