The politics of irony in American modernism /
This book shows how American literary culture in the first half of the twentieth century saw "irony" emerge as a term to describe intersections between aesthetic and political practices. Against conventional associations of irony with political withdrawal, the author shows how the term cir...
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic eBook |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
New York :
Fordham University Press,
2014
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| Edition: | First edition. |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Connect to this title online (unlimited users allowed) |
| Summary: | This book shows how American literary culture in the first half of the twentieth century saw "irony" emerge as a term to describe intersections between aesthetic and political practices. Against conventional associations of irony with political withdrawal, the author shows how the term circulated widely in literary and popular culture to describe politically engaged forms of writing. It is a critical commonplace to acknowledge the difficulty of defining irony before stipulating a particular definition as a stable point of departure for literary, cultural, and political analysis. This book, by contrast, is the first to derive definitions of "irony" inductively, showing how writers employed it as a keyword both before and in opposition to the institutionalization of New Criticism. It focuses on writers who not only composed ironic texts, but who also talked about irony and satire to situate their work politically: Randolph Bourne, Benjamin De Casseres, Ellen Glasgow, John Dos Passos, Ralph Ellison, and many others. -- |
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| Physical Description: | 1 online resource (xi, 273 pages) : illustrations |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages [195]-267) and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780823255481 0823255484 082325545X 9780823255450 9780823261086 0823261085 0823255476 9780823255474 0823255468 9780823255467 |