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Spectrality in Modernist Fiction

Spectrality in Modernist Fiction

Hardcover

Literary Criticism

ISBN10: 0192888358
ISBN13: 9780192888358
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: Oct 13 2023
Pages: 206
Weight: 1.01
Height: 0.68 Width: 6.39 Depth: 9.27
Language: English
Spectrality in Modernist Fiction argues that key modernist writers, chiefly Conrad, Forster, Butts, and Bowen, use spectral rhetoric to tackle problems of sex and sexuality, revolution, imperialism, capitalism, and desire all through complicated ethical engagements. These engagements invariably come packaged in, and are shaped by, the language of spectrality. In its capacity to articulate a particular sort of relationship between the past, the present and the future, the spectral concerns the basic question of how to proceed, how to live with-maybe even address-ethical indeterminacy. Whether their spectral rhetoric traces the logics of capitalist possession (Conrad), queer friendship and paganized Christianity (Forster), regressive politics haunted by historical traumas (Butts), or the devious passages of perverse desire (Bowen), these writers locate something like hope in their ghosts. The ethical and political impasses they chart through their spectral rhetoric are not final, but temporary, and the drive to overcome them constitutes a tensile optimism.

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Literary Criticism