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In the decade that followed 1972, the journal boundary 2 consistently published many of the most distinguished and most influential statements of an emerging literary postmodernism. Recognizing postmodernism as a dominant force in culture, particularly in the literary and narrative imagination, the journal appeared when literary critical study in the United States was in a period of theory-induced ferment. The fundamental relations between postmodernism and poststructuralism were being initially examined and the effort to formulate a critical sense of the postmodern was underway. In this volume, Paul A. Bové, the current editor of boundary 2, has gathered many of those foundational essays and, as such, has assembled a basic text in the history of postmodernism.
Essays by noted cultural and literary theorists join with Bové’s contemporary preface to represent the important and unique moment in recent intellectual history when postmodernism was no longer seen primarily as an architectural term, had not yet come to describe the wide range of culture it does now, but was finding power and place in the literary realm. These essays show that the history of postmodernism and its attendant critical theories are both more complex and more deeply bound with literary criticism than often is acknowledged today. Early Postmodernism demonstrates not only the significance of these literary studies, but also the role played by literary critical postmodernism in making possible newer forms of critical and cultural studies. Contributors. Barry Alpert, Charles Altieri, David Antin, Harold Bloom, Paul A. Bové, Hélène Cixous, Gerald Gillespie, Ihab Hassan, Joseph N. Riddel, William, V. Spanos, Catharine R. Stimpson, Cornel West
List of contents
Preface / Paul A. Bove 1
The Detective and the Boundary: Some Notes on the Postmodern Literary Imagination / William V. Spanos 17
Modernism and Postmodernism: Approaching the Present in American Poetry / David Antin 40
The New Gnosticism: Speculation on an Aspect of the Postmodern Novel / Ihab Hassan 77
From Symbolist Thought to Immanence: The Ground of Postmodern American Poetics / Charles Altieri 100
Charles Olson: Preliminary Images / Catharine R. Stimpson 140
The Dialectics of Literary Tradition / Harold Bloom 163
At Circe's, or, The Self-Opener / Helene Cixous 175
Postmodern Oral Poetry: Buckminster Fuller, John Cage, and David Antin / Barry Alpert 188
From Heidegger to Derrida to Chance: Doubling and (Poetic) Language / Joseph N. Riddel 207
Scientific Discourse and Postmodernity: Francis Bacon and the Empirical Birth of "Revision" / Gerald Gillespie 232
Nietzsche's Prefiguration of Postmodern American Philosophy / Cornel West 265
Index 291
About the author
Paul A. Bové is Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh and editor of boundary 2, an international journal of literature and culture.
Summary
In the decade that followed 1972, the journal boundary 2 consistently published many of the most distinguished and most influential statements of an emerging literary postmodernism. This title gathered many of those foundational essays.
