Title: The testimonies of Russian and American postmodern poetry
Description: "This book challenges the belief in the purely linguistic nature of contemporary poetry and offers an interpretation of late twentieth-century Russian poetry as a testimony to the unforeseen annulment of communist reality and its overnight displacement by a completely unfathomable post-totalitarian order. Albena Vassileva argues that, because of the sudden invalidation of a reality that had been largely seen as unattained and everlasting, this shift remained secluded from the mind and totally resistant to cognition, thus causing a collectively traumatic psychological experience. The book proceeds by inquiring into a school of contemporary American poetry that has been likewise read as cut off from reality. Executing a comparative analysis, Vassileva advances a new understanding of this poetry as a testimony to the overwhelming and traumatic impact of contemporary media, which have assailed the mind with far more signals than it can register, digest and furnish with semantic weight"--
Subjects: Psychic trauma in literature, Postmodernism (Literature), History and criticism, Russian poetry, Language poetry, American poetry, Avant-garde (Aesthetics), Modern Poetry, LITERARY CRITICISM / American / General, LITERARY CRITICISM / European / Eastern (see also Russian & Former Soviet Union), Russian poetry, history and criticism, Poetry, modern, history and criticism, American poetry, history and criticism, 20th century, Mental illness in literature, LITERARY CRITICISM, American, General, European, Eastern (see also Russian & Former Soviet Union)
Places: United States, Russia
Time periods: 20th century