Out of Context by Michaela Bronstein

Out of Context by Michaela Bronstein

How do novels travel through time? How might they endure in a changing world and reach the readers of an unknowable future? Modernist writers were eager to think of their books as reaching audiences they could not yet imagine. In recent years however, scholars of modernism have focused on pinning them down: putting these books in their context and these authors in their place. By looking to the future, scholars fear that looking to the future will make literature disengaged, irresponsible, or apolitical; the worry is that literature cannot escape its own moment without also evading the hard truths of history.Out of Context suggests an alternative to this scholarship, proposing that literature travels through time not by transcending history, but by adapting to historical change. The chapters of this book each pair a modernist author with a later reader. In each case, this future reader is also a novelist - someone who reads with an eye to form and craft, and who puts what they see to new use in their own novels. James Baldwin adapts Henry James's modes of characterization; Ngugi wa Thiong'o repurposes Joseph Conrad's nonchronological narratives; and Ken Kesey builds on William Faulkner's use of multiple perspectives. Reading the modernists through these authors' eyes offers a different perspective on them. Literary forms, in this history, do not have intrinsic political meanings; they have a multitude of political uses. Rather than see modernist literary form, in all its fragmentation and complexity, as a source of disruption and doubt, these later authors use modernist forms to distill doubts into conviction. The experiments of modernist fiction stand revealed as tools not of political critique but of political commitment.

In Out of Context, Bronstein compares modern and contemporary novels, focusing on formal literary elementsThe introduction and first chapter explore how past authors influence future authors, particularly the ways contemporary authors have adapted modernist experiments. In the chapters that follow, Bronstein pairs authors, showing how literary techniques could be employed in new ways. []The brief comparative analyses throughout Out of Context are insightful and beautifully contextualized, showing that literary techniques can be employed by writers in different circumstances for different rhetorical purposes. Summing Up: Highly recommended * CHOICE *

Michaela Bronstein is Assistant Professor of English at Stanford University.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780190655396
ISBN 10	0190655399
Title	Out of Context
Author	Michaela Bronstein
Series	Modernist Literature And Culture
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Oxford University Press Inc
Year published	2018-05-10
Number of pages	288
Prizes	Winner of Shortlisted for the MSA First Book Prize.
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.