Underwords
Subtitle: Re-Reading the Subtexts of Modernity
Publisher: Lang AG International Academic Publishers, Peter; Peter Lang UK; Peter Lang Ltd, International Academic Publishers
Published: 2018
Language: eng
Number of pages: 244
ISBN-13: 9781788744645
Subjects: Intertextuality; Modernism (literature); English literature, history and criticism, 20th century; Literature, modern, history and criticism, 20th century
Description: "What takes place when we examine texts close-up? The art of close reading, once the closely guarded province of professional literary critics, now underpins the everyday processes of forensic scrutiny conducted by those brigades of citizen commentators who patrol the realms of social media. This study examines at close quarters a series of key English texts from the last hundred years: the novels of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, the plays of Samuel Beckett, the poetry of Sylvia Plath and Philip Larkin, the films of Alfred Hitchcock and the tweets of Donald Trump. It digs beneath their surface meanings to discover microcosmic ambiguities, allusions, ironies and contradictions which reveal tensions and conflicts at the heart of the paradox of patriarchal history. It suggests that acts of close reading may offer radical perspectives upon the bigger picture, as well as the means by which to deconstruct it. In doing so, it suggests an alternative to a classical vision of cultural progress characterised by irreconcilable conflicts between genders, genres and generations"--