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About this book
This study explores a new understanding of modernism and ethnicity as put forward in the transnational and diasporic writings of Anzia Yezierska, Zora Neale Hurston, and Jean Rhys. In its selection of three modernists from apparently different cultural backgrounds, it is meant to make us rethink the role of modernism in terms of ethnicity and displacement. Konzett critiques the traditional understanding of the monocultural 'ethnic identity' often highlighted in the studies of these writers and argues that all three writers are better understood as ironic narrators of diaspora and movement and as avant-garde modernists. As a result, they offer an alternative aesthetics of modernism which is centered around the innovative narration of displacement. Her analysis of the complexities of language and form and impact of the complex and ambiguous formal styles of the three writers on the history of their reception is a model of the effective integration of formalist, historicist, and theoretical perspectives in literary criticism.
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Table of contents (5 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Reviews
"Delia Konzett presents a compelling argument for the nature and significance of ethnic modernisms. Offering original readings of texts by Ania Yezierska, Zora Neale Hurston, and Jean Rhys, she demonstrates the importance of their transnational perspectives for modernist aesthetics. In its argument for the significance of narrative displacement in our understanding of modernism, this book pushes current debates about ethnicity, race, national culture, and modernist writing in new and productive directions." - Mary Lou Emery, Associate Professor of English, University of Iowa
About the author
DELIA CAPAROSO KONZETT teaches film, drama, and literature at Yale University. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and is the author of a number of articles on ethnic writing.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Ethnic Modernisms
Book Subtitle: Anzia Yezierska, Zora Neale Hurston, Jean Rhys, and the Aesthetics of Dislocation
Authors: Delia Caparoso Konzett
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230107533
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan New York
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts Collection, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: Delia Caparoso Konzett 2002
Softcover ISBN: 978-1-349-38746-5Published: 06 February 2003
eBook ISBN: 978-0-230-10753-3Published: 08 November 2002
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIV, 202
Topics: Literary Theory, Cultural Theory, Literary History, Ethnicity Studies, Twentieth-Century Literature, Aesthetics