False Starts: The Rhetoric of Failure and the Making of American Modernism - Couverture souple

Ball, David M.

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0810131137 ISBN 13 : 9780810131132

Editeur : Northwestern University Press, 2014

Synopsis

From Herman Melville's claim that "failure is the true test of greatness" to Henry Adams's self-identification with the "mortifying failure in [his] long education" and William Faulkner's eagerness to be judged by his "splendid failure to do the impossible," the rhetoric of failure has served as a master trope of modernist American literary expression. David Ball's magisterial study addresses the fundamental questions of language, meaning, and authority that run counter to well-rehearsed claims of American innocence and positivity, beginning with the American Renaissance and extending into modernist and contemporary literature. The rhetoric of failure was used at various times to engage artistic ambition, the arrival of advanced capitalism, and a rapidly changing culture, not to mention sheer exhaustion. False Starts locates a lively narrative running through American literature that consequently queries assumptions about the development of modernism in the United States.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

David M. Ball is a visiting associate professor of English at Princeton University and an associate professor of English at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Northwestern University Press
• Date d'édition: 2014
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0810131137
• ISBN 13: 9780810131132
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 248
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible