
Fictions of Autonomy
Modernism from Wilde to de Man
Andrew Goldstone(Author)
Oxford University Press Inc
Published on 21. February 2013
Book
Hardback
224 pages
978-0-19-986112-5 (ISBN)
Description
No aspect of modernist literature has attracted more passionate defenses, or more furious denunciations, than its affinity for the idea of autonomy. A belief in art as a law unto itself is central to the work of many writers from the late nineteenth century to the present. But is this belief just a way of denying art's social contexts, its roots in the lives of its creators, its political and ethical obligations?
Fictions of Autonomy argues that the concept of autonomy is, on the contrary, essential for understanding modernism historically. Disputing the prevailing skepticism about autonomy, Andrew Goldstone shows that the pursuit of relative independence within society is modernism's distinctive way of relating to its contexts. Goldstone examines an expansive modernist field in fiction, poetry, and theory--Oscar Wilde, J.-K. Huysmans, Henry James, Marcel Proust, T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, Wallace Stevens, Djuna Barnes, Theodor Adorno, Paul de Man--in order to reveal an ever-shifting preoccupation with autonomy. Drawing on Bourdieu's sociology, formalist reading, and historical contextualization, this book demonstrates the importance of autonomy to modernist themes as varied as domestic service, artistic aging, expat life, and non-referentiality.
Nothing less than an argument for a wholesale revision of the assumptions of modernist studies, Fictions of Autonomy is also an intervention in literary theory. This book shows why anyone interested in literary history, the sociology of culture, and aesthetics needs to take account of the social, stylistic, and political significance of the problem, and the potential, of autonomy.
Fictions of Autonomy argues that the concept of autonomy is, on the contrary, essential for understanding modernism historically. Disputing the prevailing skepticism about autonomy, Andrew Goldstone shows that the pursuit of relative independence within society is modernism's distinctive way of relating to its contexts. Goldstone examines an expansive modernist field in fiction, poetry, and theory--Oscar Wilde, J.-K. Huysmans, Henry James, Marcel Proust, T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, Wallace Stevens, Djuna Barnes, Theodor Adorno, Paul de Man--in order to reveal an ever-shifting preoccupation with autonomy. Drawing on Bourdieu's sociology, formalist reading, and historical contextualization, this book demonstrates the importance of autonomy to modernist themes as varied as domestic service, artistic aging, expat life, and non-referentiality.
Nothing less than an argument for a wholesale revision of the assumptions of modernist studies, Fictions of Autonomy is also an intervention in literary theory. This book shows why anyone interested in literary history, the sociology of culture, and aesthetics needs to take account of the social, stylistic, and political significance of the problem, and the potential, of autonomy.
Reviews / Votes
The author's thoughtful and important consideration of literary autonomy reopens a provocative conversation with new insight, and it is intelligently and articulately conveyed. * J. Mills, Choice *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Scholars of twentieth century literature, culture, and theory; anyone interested in one of the following individual writers: Proust, Wilde, Joyce, Barnes, Wallace Stevens, T.S. Eliot.
Dimensions
Height: 240 mm
Width: 161 mm
Thickness: 17 mm
Weight
502 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-986112-5 (9780199861125)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
01/2013
1st Edition
OUP eBook
€36.99
Available for download
Person
Andrew Goldstone is Assistant Professor of English at Rutgers University.
Author
Assistant Professor of EnglishAssistant Professor of English, Rutgers University
Content
Contents ; Series Editors' Foreword ; Acknowledgments ; Introduction ; An institutional approach ; Aesthetic autonomy in practice and in philosophy ; Thee fictions of autonomy and their themes ; Modernist studies and the expanded field ; Autonomy from Labor ; In Service to Art for Art's Sake from Wilde to Proust ; Aesthetic autonomy? Our servants will do that for us ; Wilde: the truth of masks with manners ; Huysmans: the decadent master-servant dialectic ; Henry James: the subtlety of service ; Proust: service in the magic circle ; Aestheticist self-consciousness ; Autonomy from the Person ; Impersonality and Lateness in Eliot and Adorno ; Adorno's theory of impersonality ; Eliot's late style, 1910-1958 ; Four Quartets and musical lateness ; The late style and the intentional fallacy ; Expatriation as Autonomy ; Djuna Barnes, James Joyce, and Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism ; Nightwood: the luminous deterioration of cosmopolitanism ; French nights and the artist's lifestyle ; Wandering Jews, wandering Americans ; "Vagaries Malicieux": losing all connection at the Deux Magots ; Stephen Dedalus's hat ; Literature without External Reference ; Tautology in Wallace Stevens and Paul de Man ; The aesthete is the aesthete ; The Academy of Fine Ideas: Stevens and de Man in the university ; De Man, modernism, and the correspondence theory ; The sound of autonomy ; The plain sense of tautology ; Epilogue: Autonomy Now ; Autonomy, literary study, and knowledge production ; Autonomy abroad: proliferation on the world stage ; The truth about fictions of autonomy ; Index