Losing the Plot
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Losing the Plot
Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?
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See moreAn examination of the relationship between literature and classical Hollywood cinema, revealing a profound longing for plot in modernist fiction.
It is widely understood that the modernist novel sought to escape what Virginia Woolf called the “tyranny” of plot. Yet even as twentieth-century writers pushed against the constraints of Victorian, plot-driven novels, plot kept its hold on them through the influence of another medium: the cinema.
Focusing on the novels of Nella Larsen, Djuna Barnes, and William Faulkner—writers known for their affinities and connections to classical Hollywood—Pardis Dabashi links the moviegoing practices of these writers to the tensions between the formal properties of their novels and the characters in them. Even when they did not feature outright happy endings, classical Hollywood films often provided satisfying formal resolutions and promoted normative social and political values.
Watching these films, modernist authors were reminded of what they were leaving behind—both formally and in the name of aesthetic experimentalism—by losing the plot.
Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?
"An erudite, elegant, and insightful exploration of modernism’s ambivalent relationship to plot," says Dora Zhang of the University of California, Berkeley. Daniel Morgan of the University of Chicago praises the book as "an extremely ambitious work that fundamentally revises our understanding of modernist aesthetics by recasting plot as a modernist fantasy and showing cinema as its model." Their commendations emphasise Dabashi’s original and thought-provoking analysis of cinema’s impact on literary modernism.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9780226829258
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 06 November 2023
Country: United States
Imprint: University of Chicago Press
Illustration: 47 halftones
Audience: Professional and scholarly
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 25.0mm
Width: 152.0mm
Height: 229.0mm
Weight: 426g
Pages: 304
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About the Author
Pardis Dabashi is assistant professor in the Department of Literatures in English at Bryn Mawr College and a faculty affiliate in the Film Studies Program and the Middle Eastern, Central Asian, and North African Studies Program. She is the coeditor of The New William Faulkner Studies, with Sarah Gleeson-White.
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