Practices of Surprise in American Literature After Emerson

By:

Kate Stanley

Format:

Hardback

Series:

Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture

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Description

Practices of Surprise in American Literature After Emerson locates a paradoxical question - how does one prepare to be surprised? - at the heart of several major modernist texts. Arguing that this paradox of perception gives rise to an American literary methodology, this book dramatically reframes how practices of reading and writing evolved among modernist authors after Emerson. Whereas Walter Benjamin defines modernity as a 'series of shocks' inflicted from without, Emerson offers a countervailing optic that regards life as a 'series of surprises' unfolding from within. While Benjaminian shock elicits intimidation and defensiveness, Emersonian surprise fosters states of responsiveness and spontaneity whereby unexpected encounters become generative rather than enervating. As a study of how such states of responsiveness were cultivated by a post-Emerson tradition of writers and thinkers, this project displaces longstanding models of modernist perception defined by shock's passive duress, and proposes alternate models of reception that proceed from the active practice of surprise.

Author Biography:

Kate Stanley is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Western Ontario. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University in 2013. Her contributions to the study of American literature, modernism, pragmatism, and pedagogy have appeared or are forthcoming in Modernism/modernity, American Literary History, Criticism, Henry James Review, and Women's Studies Quarterly.

Release date NZ

July 19th, 2018

Author

Kate Stanley

Series

Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture

Pages

254

Audience

Professional & Vocational

Illustrations

Worked examples or Exercises

Dimensions

157x235x18

ISBN-13

9781108426879

Product ID

27594396

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