Research Catalog
Seven Modes of Uncertainty
- Title
- Seven Modes of Uncertainty / C. Namwali Serpell.
- Author
- Serpell, Namwali, 1980-
- Publication
- Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2014.
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| Status | Format | Access | Call Number | Item Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schomburg Center to submit a request in person. | Text | Use in library | Sc E 16-717 | Schomburg Center - Research & Reference |
Details
- Description
- viii, 393 pages; 25 cm
- Summary
- "What is the relationship between literature's capacity to unsettle, perplex, and bewilder us, and literature's ethical value? To revive this question, C. Namwali Serpell proposes a return to William Empson's groundbreaking work, Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930), which contends that literary uncertainty is crucial to ethics because it pushes us beyond the limits of our own experience. Taking as case studies experimental novels by Thomas Pynchon, Toni Morrison, Bret Easton Ellis, Ian McEwan, Elliot Perlman, Tom McCarthy, and Jonathan Safran Foer, Serpell suggests that literary uncertainty emerges from the reader's shifting responses to structures of conflicting information"--Jacket.
- Alternative Title
- 7 Modes of Uncertainty
- Subject
- Genre/Form
- Criticism, interpretation, etc.
- Bibliography (note)
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 305-377) and index.
- Contents
- Mutual exclusion. Oscillation : Thomas Pynchon, The crying of lot 49 (1966) ; Enfolding : rereading Ian McEwan's Atonement (2001) -- Multiplicity. Adjacency : Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987) ; Accounting : interreading William Empson's Seven types of ambiguity (1930), Shirley Jackson's "Seven types of ambiguity" (1943), and Elliot Perlman's Seven types of ambiguity (2003) -- Repetition. Vacuity : Bret Easton Ellis, American psycho (1991) ; Synchronicity : metareading Tom McCarthy's Remainder (2005) ; Conclusion : flippancy : Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely loud & incredibly close (2005).
- Call Number
- Sc E 16-717
- ISBN
- 9780674729094
- 0674729099
- LCCN
- 2013032892
- OCLC
- 859252937
- Author
- Serpell, Namwali, 1980- author.
- Title
- Seven Modes of Uncertainty / C. Namwali Serpell.
- Publisher
- Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2014.
- Type of Content
- text
- Type of Medium
- unmediated
- Type of Carrier
- volume
- Local Note
- Schomburg copy with dust jacket.
- Bibliography
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 305-377) and index.
- Local Subject
- Black author.
- Research Call Number
- Sc E 16-717