Going the distance
Subtitle: dissident subjectivity in modernist American literature
By: David R. Jarraway.
Series: Horizons in theory and American culture
Publisher: Louisiana State University Press
Published: 2003
Place of publication: Baton Rouge
Language: eng
Number of pages: 230
Subjects: American literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism.; Modernism (Literature) -- United States.; Subjectivity in literature.; Dissenters in literature.
Description: Building on his Wallace Stevens and the Question of Belief: Metaphysician in the Dark (CH, Sep'93), Jarraway (Univ. of Ottawa) uses Stevens's poetry in this book's introduction to illustrate the "distance" of this book's title, that is, the space between the culturally defined self and the empowered dissident self. Discussions focus on early works as five modernist writers struggle for self-authorization. He stresses the influence of William James for Gertrude Stein's "Three Lives" and "Tender Buttons" and John Dewey for William Carlos Williams's poems, especially "Spring and All." In Langston Hughes's "Montage of a Dream Deferred," Harlem as a "distanciated image of darkness and mystery" accompanies an assessment of Hughes's sexuality. Final chapters discuss poet Frank O'Hara's queer perversities and camp during the homophobic late 1950s and Elizabeth Bishop's silence about her lesbianism and the importance to her very selfhood of a happy childhood in Canada precipitated by separation from her mentally ill mother.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [199]-215) and index.