The Politics of Irony in American Modernism - Hardcover

Stratton, Matthew

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 082325545X ISBN 13: 9780823255450

Publisher: American Literatures Initiative, 2013

Synopsis

Shortlisted for the 2015 Modernist Studies Association Book Prize

This book shows how American literary culture in the first half of the twentieth century saw “irony” emerge as a term to describe intersections between aesthetic and political practices. Against conventional associations of irony with political withdrawal, Stratton shows how the term circulated widely in literary and popular culture to describe politically engaged forms of writing.

It is a critical commonplace to acknowledge the difficulty of defining irony before stipulating a particular definition as a stable point of departure for literary, cultural, and political analysis. This book, by contrast, is the first to derive definitions of “irony” inductively, showing how writers employed it as a keyword both before and in opposition to the institutionalization of New Criticism. It focuses on writers who not only composed ironic texts but talked about irony and satire to situate their work politically: Randolph Bourne, Benjamin De Casseres, Ellen Glasgow, John Dos Passos, Ralph Ellison, and many others.

About this title

About the Author:

Matthew Stratton is Associate Professor of English at the University of California, Davis.

Review:

"Readers who like their scholarship to be ecumenical in its sourcing and counterintuitive in its findings will find much to admire in The Politics of Irony in American Modernism."
                                                 - T. Austin Graham, American Literary History Online Reviews

Shortlisted for the 2015 MSA Book Prize, Modernist Studies Association

About this edition

• Publisher: American Literatures Initiative
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 082325545X
• ISBN 13: 9780823255450
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304