Writers for the nation : American literary modernism

Resource Information

The work Writers for the nation : American literary modernism represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in University of Missouri-St. Louis Libraries. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Writers for the nation : American literary modernism

Title remainder

American literary modernism

Statement of responsibility

C. Barry Chabot

Creator

• Chabot, C. Barry, 1944-

Subject

• Politics and literature -- United States -- History -- 20th century
• Criticism, interpretation, etc
• History
• Brooks, Van Wyck, 1886-1963
• Modernism (Literature) -- United States
• American literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism
• United States -- Intellectual life -- 20th century
• Literature and society -- United States -- History -- 20th century

Genre

• Criticism, interpretation, etc
• History

Language

eng

Summary

The years between World War I and World War II are commonly seen as the period when international modernism took hold in American art. C. Barry Chabot, however, argues against the assumption that American modernist writers were preoccupied by artistic innovation and thus indifferent to the nation's social and political life. Chabot shows that American literary modernists participated actively in a broad conversation about ways to restore or create feelings of belonging among their contemporaries who thought that life was becoming increasingly abrasive and that the United State no longer afforded its citizens a viable sense of community. Although each writer identified this loss of community, each described it in somewhat different terms, ascribed to it different causes, and proposed different ways to redress it. Writers for the Nation represents the cultural debate that American literary modernism staged about how this national problem could best be resolved. Through careful readings of a select few authors - including Willa Cather, T.S. Eliot, Allen Tate, Jessie Fauset, Langston Hughes, and Wallace Stevens - Chabot demonstrates how these writers understood the social situation, how they proposed to correct it, and how each proposed remedy contained its own limitations. He presents affinities among writers usually assumed to have little in common, writers who all produced powerful variants of American literary modernism

Cataloging source

DLC

Dewey number

810.9/112

Government publication

government publication of a state province territory dependency etc

Index

index present

LC call number

PS228.M63

LC item number

C48 1997

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography