Research Catalog
Violence without God : the rhetorical despair of twentieth-century writers
- Title
- Violence without God : the rhetorical despair of twentieth-century writers / Joyce Wexler.
- Author
- Wexler, Joyce Piell, 1947-
- Publication
- New York : Bloomsbury Academic, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc, 2017.
Items in the Library & Off-site
Filter by
1 Item
| Status | Format | Access | Call Number | Item Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schwarzman Building to submit a request in person. | Text | Use in library | JFD 17-811 | Schwarzman Building - Main Reading Room 315 |
Details
- Description
- ix, 204 pages : illustrations; 22 cm
- Summary
- "As twentieth-century writers confronted the political violence of their time, they were overcome by rhetorical despair. Unspeakable acts left writers speechless. They knew that the atrocities of the century had to be recorded, but how? A dead body does not explain itself, and the narrative of the suicide bomber is not the story of the child killed in the blast. In the past, communal beliefs had justified or condemned the most horrific acts, but the late nineteenth-century crisis of belief made it more difficult to come to terms with the meaning of violence. In this major new study, Joyce Wexler argues that this situation produced an aesthetic dilemma that writers solved by inventing new forms. Although Symbolism, Expressionism, Modernism, Magic Realism, and Postmodernism have been criticized for turning away from public events, these forms allowed writers to represent violence without imposing a specific meaning on events or claiming to explain them. Wexler's investigation of the way we think and write about violence takes her across national and period boundaries and into the work of some of the greatest writers of the century, among them Joseph Conrad, T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Alfred Döblin, Günter Grass, Gabriel García Márquez, Salman Rushdie, and W. G. Sebald."--
- "Third year undergraduates and above studying twentieth-century literature, modernism, comparative literature, literature and culture"--
- Subjects
- Despair in literature
- LITERARY CRITICISM / Semiotics & Theory
- Literature, Modern > 20th century > History and criticism
- Authors > 21st century > Psychology
- Literature, Modern > 21st century > History and criticism
- Atrocities in literature
- Violence in literature
- Authors > 20th century > Psychology
- LITERARY CRITICISM / General
- Rhetoric and psychology
- Bibliography (note)
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 188-198) and index.
- Contents
- Machine generated contents note: -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: The Problem -- 1. Symbolism in a Secular Age -- 2. T. S. Eliot's Expressionist Angst -- 3. D. H. Lawrence's Women in Love and Men at War -- 4. Ulysses, the Mythical Method, and Magic Realism -- 5. The German Route from Ulysses to Magic Realism -- 6. How to Write about the Holocaust -- Epilogue: The End of the Secular Age -- Bibliography -- Index.
- Call Number
- JFD 17-811
- ISBN
- 9781501325281
- 1501325280
- LCCN
- 2016020328
- OCLC
- 2016020328
- Author
- Wexler, Joyce Piell, 1947- author.
- Title
- Violence without God : the rhetorical despair of twentieth-century writers / Joyce Wexler.
- Publisher
- New York : Bloomsbury Academic, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc, 2017.
- Type of Content
- text
- Type of Medium
- unmediated
- Type of Carrier
- volume
- Bibliography
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 188-198) and index.
- Other Form:
- Online version: Wexler, Joyce Piell, 1947- Violence without God New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2016 9781501325311 (DLC) 2016039152
- Research Call Number
- JFD 17-811