Hart Crane''s Queer Modernist Aesthetic

"Through close readings of a wide range of his poems, prose, letters, and manuscripts, this book shows how Hart Crane created an alternative form of literary modernism, queering modernist experience. It goes beyond representations of sexuality in the texts to show how Crane employs queerness as an intellectual strategy in order to challenge these areas of modernist concern. Whilst the study engages with debates current within modernist studies, such as geography, spatial form, the material world, and the influence of technology, it also shows how recent concepts within queer theory such as the antisocial thesis and debates over temporality can help us to read Crane's work differently. The book challenges existing versions of Crane as a 'difficult' poet,and suggests the means by which other queer modernists might be re-read in light of this discussion of Crane's work. "--

List of contents

Introduction: Relationality 1. American Decadence and the Creation of a Queer Modernist Aesthetic 2. Abstraction and Intersubjectivity in White Buildings 3. Spatiality, Movement, and the Logic of Metaphor 4. Temporality, Futurity, and the Body 5. Empiricism, Mysticism, and a Queer Form of Knowledge 6. Queer Technology, Failure, and a Return to the Hand Conclusion: Towards a Queer Community Notes Bibliography Index

About the author

Niall Munro is Senior Lecturer in American Literature at Oxford Brookes University, UK.

Summary

Hart Crane's Queer Modernist Aesthetic argues that the aspects of experience which modernists sought to interrogate – time, space, and material things – were challenged further by Crane's queer poetics. Reading Crane alongside contemporary queer theory shows how he creates an alternative form of modernism.

Product details

• Authors: N Munro, N. Munro, Niall Munro
• Publisher: Palgrave UK
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 30.03.2015
• EAN: 9781137407757
• ISBN: 978-1-137-40775-7
• No. of pages: 231
• Subjects: Fiction > Poetry, drama; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; Nordamerika (USA und Kanada), B, Kulturwissenschaften, Literatur: Geschichte und Kritik, Cultural Studies, Cultural Theory, Literaturwissenschaft: Lyrik und Dichter, Poetry, auseinandersetzen, Literary theory, North America (USA and Canada), Culture—Study and teaching, Poetry and Poetics, Twentieth-Century Literature, Palgrave Literature Collection, Literature—Philosophy, America—Literatures, North American Literature, Literature: history and criticism, Literary studies: poetry and poets