Imagining Paris: Exile, Writing, and American Identity - Hardcover

Kennedy, J. Gerald

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300057474 ISBN 13: 9780300057478

Publisher: Yale University Press, 1993

Synopsis

Explores how living in Paris shaped the literary works of five expatriate Americans: Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, Henry Miller, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Djuna Barnes. The book treats these figures and their works as instances of the effect of place on writing and the formation of the self.

About this title

From Library Journal:

Although there are innumerable studies of the American expatriate experience in Paris between 1900 and 1940, Kennedy (English, Louisiana State Univ.) presents "a revisionary account of certain exemplary writers from a specific critical and theoretical perspective." He explores the intense effect of place as it transformed the writings and self-identities of Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, Henry Miller, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Djuna Barnes. Citing passages from their major narratives, Kennedy demonstrates how the experiences of Paris not only liberated these modernist exiles intellectually and emotionally from their American roots but aroused feelings of alienation, displacement, and ambiguity. With its inherent dilemmas, Kennedy's concept of place adds clear, fresh scholarship to the existing knowledge on the American expatriate writers. Recommended for academic and large public libraries.
- Joan Levin, MLS, Chicago
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Publishers Weekly:

A useful analysis of the city of Paris' influence on the expatriate writings of American authors like Gertrude Stein and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0300057474
• ISBN 13: 9780300057478
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288