The Poetics of Insecurity - American Fiction and the Uses of Threat

The Poetics of Insecurity addresses a key concern of modern America - security - through close readings of American literary works. It combines literary studies with the philosophy of time and sociological theories of modernity, and provides new approaches to canonical American authors from the past two centuries.

List of contents

1. Introduction: security and the uncertain worlds of fiction; 2. The virtue of uncertainty: securing the republic in Arthur Mervyn; 3. Harriet Jacobs's imagined community of insecurity; 4. Willa Cather and the security of radical contingency; 5. Cold War liberalism and Flannery O'Connor's 'The Displaced Person'; 6. In the future, toward death: finance capitalism and security in DeLillo's cosmopolis; Epilogue.

About the author

Johannes Voelz is Professor of American Studies, Democracy, and Aesthetics at Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, Germany. In 2016, he was awarded a Heisenberg-Professorship by the German Research Foundation. He is the author of Transcendental Resistance: The New Americanists and Emerson's Challenge (2010) and has edited several books and special issues, among them 'Security and Liberalism' (Telos, 2015) and 'Chance, Risk, Security: Approaches to Uncertainty in American Literature' (Amerikastudien/American Studies, 2015).

Summary

The Poetics of Insecurity addresses a key concern of modern America - security - through close readings of American literary works. It combines literary studies with the philosophy of time and sociological theories of modernity, and provides new approaches to canonical American authors from the past two centuries.

Product details

• Authors: Johannes Voelz, Voelz Johannes
• Publisher: Cambridge Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 31.01.2022
• EAN: 9781108407861
• ISBN: 978-1-108-40786-1
• Dimensions: 152 mm x 229 mm x 15 mm
• Weight: 390 g
• Illustrations: Worked examples or Exercises
• Series: Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture
• Subjects: Fiction > Poetry, drama; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; 20th Century, LITERARY CRITICISM / Semiotics & Theory, North America, c 1800 to c 1900, 19th century, c 1800 to c 1899, 20th century, c 1900 to c 1999, Literature: history & criticism, Literary theory, The Americas, North America (USA and Canada), Literature: history and criticism