Wow! eBook
Material Difference: Modernism and the Allegories of Discourse: 65
Author(s): William D. Melaney (Author)
- Publisher: Editions Rodopi B.V.
- Publication Date: 1 Jan. 2012
- Language: English
- Print length: 265 pages
- ISBN-10: 9789042034488
- ISBN-13: 9042034483
Book Description
Material Difference: Modernism and the Allegories of Discourse argues that deconstruction can be employed in conjunction with the historically-oriented approach to cultural experience that is favored by Critical Theory. The two discourses that inform this comparative study situate Modernism between evolving traditions that begin with Hegel and Nietzsche, leading on to Adorno’s commitment to philosophical aesthetics and Derrida’s concern for writing (écriture). Interrelated discussions of eight major authors, working in four different languages, are presented to show how allegorical Modernism foreshadows the possibility of cultural history. Joyce, Kafka, Malraux, Rilke, and Stevens are among the authors discussed in this book. The notion of material difference allows literature to be redefined in semiotic terms and demonstrates how the allegorical imagination mediates between art and time.
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
William D. Melaney is Associate Professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the American University in Cairo. He has published extensively in the fields of both modern literature and Continental philosophy. His first book, After Ontology: Literary Theory and Modernist Poetics (Albany: SUNY Press, 2001), brought together Gadamer’s hermeneutics and Derrida’s deconstruction in order to reread some of the key texts in Anglo-American Modernism. This early study compared both positions in order to re-examine the Modernist legacy in the work of major representatives.
