Description
Book SynopsisMaterial Difference: Modernism and the Allegories of Discourse argues that deconstruction can be employed in conjunction with the historically-oriented approach to cultural experience that is favored by Critical Theory. The two discourses that inform this comparative study situate Modernism between evolving traditions that begin with Hegel and Nietzsche, leading on to Adorno’s commitment to philosophical aesthetics and Derrida’s concern for writing (écriture). Interrelated discussions of eight major authors, working in four different languages, are presented to show how allegorical Modernism foreshadows the possibility of cultural history. Joyce, Kafka, Malraux, Rilke, and Stevens are among the authors discussed in this book. The notion of material difference allows literature to be redefined in semiotic terms and demonstrates how the allegorical imagination mediates between art and time.
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction: Allegory and Modernist Literature Allegories of Discourse Benjamin and Allegory: Resituating Modernist Practices Allegory in Adorno/Derrida: Reading Material Difference Allegorical Prose Joyce’s Genealogies: Myth and Allegorical Criticism Kafka’s Promise: Memory and the Art of Writing Malraux’s Hope: Voices, Traces, Memorials Andrić’s Resistance: Testimonies of Historical Conflict Allegorical Poetry Rilke’s Material Semiotics: On Signs and Performativity Eliot’s Autobiographical Trace: Time and Critical Revision Williams and Poetic Renewal: Borderlands, Exile, Return Stevens and the Claims of Lyric: Allegory and Poetic Life The Allegorical Imagination A Semiotics of Reading: Literature, Language and History Allegories of the Spirit: Modernism and Material Difference Bibliography Index
