RENEWAL OF LITERATURE - Hardcover

Poirier, Richard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0394501403 ISBN 13: 9780394501406

Publisher: Random House, 1987

Synopsis

Examines the cultural and human value of literature, offering a new interpretation of Emersonian authors, from William James to Wallace Stevens

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

As Poirier tells it, T. S. Eliot spearheaded modernism's assault on American literature. Anglo-American modernism favored writing full of dislocations, of expressions of anxiety, loss and doubt. It made "difficulty" a virtue and elevated literature to a privileged, exclusive form of discourse. Poets like Frost and Stevens were pushed aside, made to seem naive and optimistic by comparison with modernists. Poirier takes as his starting point Emerson, whose pragmatic outlook defined literature as a testing-ground for the energizing spirit of human will. He follows what he discerns as an Emersonian tradition through such writers as Thoreau, Whitman, William James, Frost and Norman Mailer, "the most conspicuous Emersonian of the present time." According to Poirier, literature does not have redemptive powers to change the world but, as "the Olympus of talk," literature shows readers how a culture's assumptions can be challenged. Poirier is author of A World Elsewhere and Robert Frost: The Work of Knowing.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal:

Poirier turns to Emerson, Frost, Stevens, and William Jamesand incidentally to Thoreau, Whitman, and Wordsworthto find support for his powerful critique of modernism as practiced by contemporary writers, critics, and academics. Challenging the modernist and postmodernist notion that the "writing and reading of literature have a culturally redemptive power," he instead sees literature as a source of "renewal." Through his readings he expands this position, eventually setting forth a theory of language and literature that may serve as a watershed for a new approach to the reading, writing, and criticism of literature. Highly recommended to the general reader as well as to academic libraries. Walter Waring, Emeritus Prof., English Dept., Kalamazoo Coll., Mich.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House
• Publication date: 1987
• ISBN 10: 0394501403
• ISBN 13: 9780394501406
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256