The modernist nation : generation, renaissance, and twentieth-century American literature / Michael Soto.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Soto, Michael.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--20th century--History and criticism.

American literature.

Modernism (Literature)--United States.

Modernism (Literature).

United States.

Avant-garde (Aesthetics)--United States--History--20th century.

Avant-garde (Aesthetics).

History.

National characteristics, American, in literature.

Conflict of generations in literature.

Nationalism in literature.

Artists in literature.

Beats (Persons).

Physical Description:

x, 228 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Tuscaloosa : University of Alabama Press, [2004]

Summary:

The Modernist Nation examines why America's modern literary movements have come to be characterized as "generations" and "renaissances," from the Lost Generation and the Beat Generation to the Harlem, Southern, and San Francisco Renaissances. The metaphor of rebirth, Michael Soto argues, offered and continues to offer American writers a conceptual shorthand for imagining American cultural history, especially as a departure from Old World (English) trappings.

Soto highlights the interracial dynamics of American literary movements, touching on authors as varied as Malcolm Cowley, W.E.B. DuBois, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Heming-way, Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson, Gertrude Stein, and Jack Kerouac. After assessing the origins of the Lost Generation and the Harlem Renaissance, Soto traces the rise of the "bohemian artist" narrative, and demonstrates how a polyethnic cast of writers and critics envisioned American literary production in terms of symbolic rebirth.

Contents:

Generational rhetoric and American avant-gardism

Renaissance rhetoric and American cultural nationalism

American modernism is born : the rise of the Bohemian artist narrative

The modernist generation : growing up in the American race.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [203]-219) and index.

ISBN:

0817313923

OCLC:

53469438