Midcentury Suspension - Literature and Feeling in the Wake of World War II

How did literary artists confront the middle of a century already defined by two global wars and newly faced with a nuclear future? Claire Seiler argues that a sense of suspension-a feeling of being between beginnings and endings, recent horrors and opaque horizons-shaped transatlantic literary forms and cultural expression in this singular moment.

List of contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Midcentury Problem
1. The Timely Suspensions of Elizabeth Bishop’s A Cold Spring
2. W. H. Auden, Ralph Ellison, and the Midcentury Anxiety Consensus
3. Elizabeth Bowen and Samuel Beckett Waiting in the Middle
4. The Sonic Suspensions of Frank O’Hara
Afterword
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index

About the author

Claire Seiler is associate professor of English at Dickinson College.

Summary

How did literary artists confront the middle of a century already defined by two global wars and newly faced with a nuclear future? Claire Seiler argues that a sense of suspension—a feeling of being between beginnings and endings, recent horrors and opaque horizons—shaped transatlantic literary forms and cultural expression in this singular moment.

Additional text

Seiler does the study of twentieth-century literature a major service . . . Essential reading for any scholar of twentieth-century Anglo American literature, Midcentury Suspension performs the impressive feat of examining, in close detail, several works by important Anglo American writers while linking them to each other and to their time through the heuristic of suspension.

Product details

• Authors: Claire Seiler
• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.07.2020
• EAN: 9780231194686
• ISBN: 978-0-231-19468-6
• No. of pages: 304
• Series: Modernist Latitudes
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; USA, Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900, HISTORY / Modern / General, 20th Century, LITERARY CRITICISM / Semiotics & Theory, LITERARY CRITICISM / American / General, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 20th Century, Ireland, United Kingdom, Great Britain, United States of America, USA, Literary studies: general, Literary studies: from c 1900 -, General and world history, Literary theory, Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000, history; comparative literature