Fictions of Autonomy by Andrew Goldstone
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.-
Nations of Nothing But Poetry
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Epic Negation
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Blasphemous Modernism
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Culture Writing
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Without Copyrights
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Americanizing Britain
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The Poetry of the Americas
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Consuming Traditions
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The Art of Scandal
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Modernism and Copyright
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Accented America
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Modernism's Mythic Pose
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Digital Modernism
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Commonwealth of Letters
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Pragmatic Modernism
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In a Strange Room
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The Degenerate Muse
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Modernism and the New Spain
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Modernism and Melancholia
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At the Violet Hour
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Out of Context
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In and Out of Sight
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Modernist Informatics
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World Views
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Unseasonable Youth
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The Great American Songbooks
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The Modernist Art of Queer Survival
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Machine-Age Comedy
The author's thoughtful and important consideration of literary autonomy reopens a provocative conversation with new insight, and it is intelligently and articulately conveyed* J. Mills, Choice *
Andrew Goldstone is Assistant Professor of English at Rutgers University.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780199861125 |
| ISBN 10 | 0199861129 |
| Title | Fictions of Autonomy |
| Author | Andrew Goldstone |
| Series | Modernist Literature And Culture |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press Inc |
| Year published | 2013-02-21 |
| Number of pages | 224 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |