Postwar American fiction and the rise of modern conservatism : a literary history, 1945-2008 / Bryan M. Santin, Concordia University Irvine.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Santin, Bryan Michael, author.

Series:

Cambridge studies in American literature and culture ; 186.

Cambridge studies in American literature and culture ; [186]

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

American fiction.

Conservatism--United States--History--20th century.

Conservatism.

United States.

History.

Politics and literature--United States--History--20th century.

Politics and literature.

Right and left (Political science) in literature.

Conservatism in literature.

United States--Politics and government--20th century.

Politics and government.

United States--Intellectual life--20th century.

Intellectual life.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (viii, 295 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2021.

System Details:

text file

PDF

Summary:

Bryan M. Santin examines over a half-century of intersection between American fiction and postwar conservatism. He traces the shifting racial politics of movement conservatism to argue that contemporary perceptions of literary form and aesthetic value are intrinsically connected to the rise of the American Right. Instead of casting postwar conservatives as cynical hustlers or ideological fanatics, Santin shows how the long-term rhetorical shift in conservative notions of literary value and prestige reveal an aesthetic antinomy between high culture and low culture. This shift, he argues, registered and mediated the deeper foundational antinomy structuring postwar conservatism itself: the stable social order of traditionalism and the creative destruction of free-market capitalism. Postwar conservatives produced, in effect, an ambivalent double register in the discourse of conservative literary taste that sought to celebrate neo-aristocratic manifestations of cultural capital while condemning newer, more progressive manifestations revolving around racial and ethnic diversity.

Contents:

US Literature and the Modern Right at Midcentury: Conservative Modernism, Race, and the Cold War, 1945-1960

The Conservative Movement's Foundational Fictions: Flannery O'Connor, Ayn Rand, and the Evolving Literary Forms of Conservatism, 1950-1964

The Strongbox of Custom: James Baldwin, Norman Mailer, and the Shifting Racial Logic of Postwar Conservatism, 1955-1972

Movement Conservatism, Neoconservatism, and the New Right: Saul Bellow and Thomas Pynchon in the Age of Reagan, 1970-1990

The American Novel and the Reagan Revolution: The Ascent of Toni Morrison in the Age of Conservative Pop Fiction, 1987-2000

Epilogue: The Curious (Conservative) Case of Marilynne Robinson.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 26 Mar 2021).

Other Format:

Print version:

ISBN:

9781108961974

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.