Modernism, nationalism, and the novel / / Pericles Lewis

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910806868903321
• Autore: Lewis Pericles
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Cambridge, U.K. ; ; New York. NY, USA, : Cambridge University Press, 2000
• ISBN: 1-107-11802-6; 0-521-03302-0; 9786610169221; 0-511-48514-X; 1-280-16922-2; 0-511-30305-X; 0-511-15048-2; 0-511-04865-3; 0-511-11796-5
• Edizione: [1st ed.]
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (x, 241 pages) : digital, PDF file(s)
• Disciplina: 809.3/9358
• Soggetti: Fiction - 20th century - History and criticism; Nationalism and literature - History - 20th century; Modernism (Literature)
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references (p. 233-237) and index.
• Nota di contenuto: 1. The modern novelist as redeemer of the nation -- ; 2. The crisis of liberal nationalism -- ; 3. "His sympathies were in the right place": Conrad and the discourse of national character -- ; 4. Citizens of the Plain: Proust and the discourse of national will -- ; 5. "Il vate nazionale": D'Annunzio and the discourse of embodiment.
• Sommario/riassunto: In Modernism, Nationalism, and the Novel, first published in 2000, Pericles Lewis shows how political debates over the sources and nature of 'national character' prompted radical experiments in narrative form amongst modernist writers. Though critics have accused the modern novel of shunning the external world, Lewis suggests that, far from abandoning nineteenth-century realists' concern with politics, the modernists used this emphasis on individual consciousness to address ; the distinctively political ways in which the modern nation-state shapes the psyche of its subjects. Tracing this theme through Joyce, Proust and Conrad, amongst others, Lewis claims that modern novelists gave life to a whole generation of narrators who forged new social realities in their own images. Their literary techniques - multiple narrators, transcriptions of consciousness, involuntary memory, and arcane symbolism - focused attention on the shaping of the individual by the nation and on the potential of the individual, in time of crisis, to redeem the nation.