1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910455864203321

Autore

Grace Sherrill E.

Titolo

Regression and apocalypse : studies in North American literary expressionism / / Sherrill E. Grace

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Toronto, [Ontario] ; ; Buffalo, [New York] ; ; London, [England] : , : University of Toronto Press, , 1989

©1989

ISBN

1-282-03971-7

9786612039713

1-4426-7915-8

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (363 p.)

Disciplina

812.509

Soggetti

American drama - 20th century - History and criticism

Expressionism in literature

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Plates -- Preface -- Introduction -- 1. Expressionism: History, Definition, and Theory -- 2. German Expressionism in the Arts -- 3. The New Art of the Theatre' in New York and Toronto -- 4. Eugene O'Neill: The American Georg Kaiser -- 5. Herman Voaden's 'Symphonic Expressionism' -- 6. The Dark Night of the Soul: Djuna Barnes's Nightwood -- 7. The Soul in Writhing Anguish: Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano -- 8. Sheila Watson and the 'Double Hook' of Expressive Abstraction -- 9. The real soul-sickness': Self-Creation and the Expressionist Method in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man -- 10 From Modernism to Postmodernism: Conclusions, Speculations, and Questions -- Notes -- Select Bibliography -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

Expressionism continues to fascinate scholars, and in fact has recently passed through yet another revival. From its roots in German history, aesthetics, painting, theatre, and literature, it has spread to become an international phenomenon. In this analysis of Expressionist writing by Canadian and American authors, Sherrill Grace adds important new dimension to our understanding of the works of a number of



playwrights and novelists.Working from a set of topoi and structural paradigms, Grace discusses selected examples of expressionistic texts by Eugene O'Neill, Herman Voaden, Malcolm Lowry, Ralph Ellison, Djuna Barnes, and Sheila Watson. Each of these writers was demonstrably conversatn with and influenced by German Expressionism in one or more media; taken together they suggest an alternative modernism to that of Joyce, Woolf, or Stein, and a common articulation of problems in stylistics, genre and form, and thematics.Grace concludes by relating the expressionism of these modernists to the 'neo-expressionism' of postmodernist art, pointing out a number of contemporary painters and writers who exploit the legacy of Expressionism in new ways.