1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910451775103321

Autore

Bell Kevin <1966->

Titolo

Ashes taken for fire [[electronic resource] ] : aesthetic modernism and the critique of identity / / Kevin Bell

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Minneapolis, : University of Minnesota Press, c2007

ISBN

0-8166-9889-9

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (264 p.)

Disciplina

823/.9109112

Soggetti

American fiction - 20th century - History and criticism

Modernism (Literature) - United States

English fiction - 20th century - History and criticism

Modernism (Literature) - England

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. 239-245) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Holographic ensemble : the death of doubt itself in The nigger of the "Narcissus" -- Something savage, something pedantic : imaginary portraits of certitude in Jacob's room -- Maladjusted phantasms : the ontological question of blackness in Light in August -- The business of dreams : retailing presence in Miss Lonelyhearts -- Chaos and surface in Invisible man -- Assuming the position : fugitivity and futurity in the work of Chester Himes.

Sommario/riassunto

Kevin Bell surveys fiction by Conrad, Woolf, Faulkner, West, Ellison, and Himes to argue that modernism exposes cultural identities such as blackness as mere strategies of conforming the self into belonging. For while blackness operates as a standard figural expression for disorientation, its presumably "voided" character is reprojected in this work as an immanent force of possibility and experimentation.