Face and form : physiognomy in literary modernism / Anca Parvulescu.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Parvulescu, Anca, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Face in literature.

Physiognomy in literature.

Modernism (Literature).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (vii, 196 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2025.

Summary:

Faces, faces, faces - faces everywhere! Modernism was obsessed with the ubiquity of the human face. Thomas Mann, Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, and, later, Kōbō Abe framed their literary projects around the question of the face, its dynamic of legibility and opacity. In literary modernism, the face functioned as a proxy for form, memory, intermediality, or difference - and combinations thereof. The old pseudo-science of physiognomy, which assumed faces to be sites of legible meaning, was in the process reconfigured. Modernist faces lost their connection to interiority, but remained surfaces of reading and interpretation. As such, they also became canvases for creative appropriation, what Mina Loy called auto-facial-construction. The modernist overinvestment in faces functions as a warning against the return of physiognomy in contemporary technologies of facial recognition. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 28 Aug 2025).

ISBN:

1-009-59978-X

1-009-59982-8

1-009-59980-1

Access Restriction:

Open Access. Unrestricted online access