LEADER 04059nam 22005891 450 001 9910162917403321 005 20170117141341.0 010 $a1-5013-2967-7 010 $a1-5013-2968-5 010 $a1-5013-2966-9 024 7 $a10.5040/9781501329685 035 $a(CKB)3710000001045130 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC4803274 035 $a(OCoLC)969203079 035 $a(UtOrBLW)bpp09260568 035 $a(UtOrBLW)BP9781501329685BC 035 $a(EXLCZ)993710000001045130 100 $a20170328d2017 uy 0 101 0 $aeng 135 $aurcnu|||||||| 181 $2rdacontent 182 $2rdamedia 183 $2rdacarrier 200 10$aMere reading $ethe poetics of wonder in modern American novels /$fLee Clark Mitchell 210 1$aNew York :$cBloomsbury Academic,$d2017. 215 $a1 online resource (281 pages) 311 $a1-5013-2965-0 311 $a1-5013-2964-2 320 $aIncludes bibliographical references and index. 327 $aMachine generated contents note: -- Introduction: Slowing Down -- 1. Possession in The Professor's House (1925) -- 2. Oscillation in Lolita (1955) -- 3. Hospitality in Housekeeping (1980) -- 4. Violence in Blood Meridian (1985) -- 5. Language in The Road (2006) -- 6. Belatedness in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007) -- Epilogue: Resisting Rules -- Bibliography -- Index. 330 $a"Mere Reading argues for a return to the foundations of literary study established nearly a century ago. Following a recent period dominated by symptomatic analyses of fictional texts (new historicist, Marxist, feminist, identity-political), Lee Clark Mitchell joins a burgeoning neo-formalist movement in challenging readers to embrace a rationale for literary criticism that has too long been ignored-a neglect that corresponds, perhaps not coincidentally, to a flight from literature courses themselves. In close readings of six American novels spread over the past century-Willa Cather's The Professor's House, Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping, Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian and The Road, and Junot Di?az's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao-Mitchell traces a shifting strain of late modernist innovation that celebrates a species of magic and wonder, of aesthetic "bliss" (as Barthes and Nabokov both coincidentally described the experience) that dumbfounds the reader and compels a reassessment of interpretive assumptions. The novels included here aspire to being read slowly, so that sounds, rhythms, repetitions, rhymes, and other verbal features take on a heightened poetic status-in critic Barbara Johnson's words, "the rigorous perversity and seductiveness of literary language."--thwarting pressures of plot that otherwise push us ineluctably forward. In each chapter, the return to "mere reading" becomes paradoxically a gesture that honors the intractability of fictional texts, their sheer irresolution, indeed the way in which their "literary" status rests on the play of irreconcilables that emerges from the verbal tensions we find ourselves first astonished by, then delighting in."--Bloomsbury Publishing. 330 $a"Argues through close readings of twentieth-century American novels for a return to the foundations of literary study"--Bloomsbury Publishing. 606 $aAmerican fiction$y20th century$xHistory and criticism 606 $aAmerican fiction$y21st century$xHistory and criticism 606 $aBooks and reading 606 $aCriticism 606 $aWonder in literature 606 $2Literary theory 615 0$aAmerican fiction$xHistory and criticism. 615 0$aAmerican fiction$xHistory and criticism. 615 0$aBooks and reading. 615 0$aCriticism. 615 0$aWonder in literature. 676 $a813/.509 686 $aLIT007000$aLIT006000$aLIT004020$2bisacsh 700 $aMitchell$b Lee Clark$f1947-$01207830 801 0$bUtOrBLW 801 1$bUtOrBLW 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910162917403321 996 $aMere reading$92786491 997 $aUNINA