| Making Conversation in Modernist Fiction Contributor(s): Alsop, Elizabeth (Author) |
|
 |
ISBN: 081421407X ISBN-13: 9780814214077 Publisher: Ohio State University Press OUR PRICE: $64.30 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: September 2019 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh - Literary Criticism | American - General - Literary Criticism | European - General |
| Dewey: 823.909 |
| LCCN: 2019015274 |
| Series: Theory Interpretation Narrativ |
| Physical Information: 0.63" H x 6" W x 9" (1.03 lbs) 202 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - British Isles |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Making Conversation in Modernist Fiction examines the role of character dialogue in key works of Anglo-American modernism. Through close analysis of texts including The Ambassadors, The Sun Also Rises, "The Dead," The Sound and the Fury, Absalom, Absalom!, The Waves, Between the Acts, "Melanctha," and Cane, the book documents the ways in which some of the most canonical British and American modernist authors transformed the conventions traditionally used to render talk in fiction. If historically dialogue had been treated as a subordinate element in fiction-a tool for developing character or advancing plot-this book demonstrates that writers such as Henry James, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, William Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, and Gertrude Stein would increasingly emphasize it as a poetic structure in its own right. In this way, Alsop argues, modernist writers "make" conversation in radically new ways and for a diverse range of expressive and communicative ends. Over the course of five chapters that explore this previously overlooked avenue of modernist innovation, Making Conversation offers readers a radical new paradigm not only for understanding fictional talk but also for interpreting some of the most celebrated examples of early twentieth-century narrative. |