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Race and the Modernist Imagination

Race and the Modernist Imagination Modern Language Quarterly 72:4 (December 2011) © 2011 by University of Washington MLQ December 2011 fable of discovery and the fable of founding” and America as the place where the “previously disenfranchised” come to voice (xxiv). Absent a theory or interpretation of American literary history, the volume arranges the essays roughly by the dates of events they concern, to create the illusion that “history” is being written here. A concatenation of events, of course, is not a history, as it lacks a rationale for sequence and inclusion, or an overarching interpretation founded on a theory of the relation of facts and meanings, or historical events and the significance given to them. This is not a history of American literature, then, but a “literary” experiment with American history. Indeed, “literature” understood as imaginative works of fiction, poetry, and drama merits only about half the entries in the volume. In a statement that may be taken to express the editors’ philosophy in words more precise than their own, Joshua Clover argues that the “apotheosis” of Bob Dylan “is an index of perhaps the most singular fact concerning ‘the literary’ in the post – World War II era: the accelerating collapse http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Modern Language Quarterly: A Journal of Literary History Duke University Press

Race and the Modernist Imagination

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Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
Copyright © Duke Univ Press
ISSN
0026-7929
eISSN
1527-1943
DOI
10.1215/00267929-1382524
Publisher site
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Abstract

Modern Language Quarterly 72:4 (December 2011) © 2011 by University of Washington MLQ December 2011 fable of discovery and the fable of founding” and America as the place where the “previously disenfranchised” come to voice (xxiv). Absent a theory or interpretation of American literary history, the volume arranges the essays roughly by the dates of events they concern, to create the illusion that “history” is being written here. A concatenation of events, of course, is not a history, as it lacks a rationale for sequence and inclusion, or an overarching interpretation founded on a theory of the relation of facts and meanings, or historical events and the significance given to them. This is not a history of American literature, then, but a “literary” experiment with American history. Indeed, “literature” understood as imaginative works of fiction, poetry, and drama merits only about half the entries in the volume. In a statement that may be taken to express the editors’ philosophy in words more precise than their own, Joshua Clover argues that the “apotheosis” of Bob Dylan “is an index of perhaps the most singular fact concerning ‘the literary’ in the post – World War II era: the accelerating collapse

Journal

Modern Language Quarterly: A Journal of Literary History – Duke University Press

Published: Dec 1, 2011

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