No aspect of modernist literature has attracted more passionate defenses, or more furious denunciations, than its affinity for the idea of autonomy. A belief in art as a law unto itself is central to the work of many writers from the late nineteenth century to the present. But is this belief just a way of denying art's social contexts, its roots in the lives of its creators, its political and ethical obligations?Fictions of Autonomy
argues that the concept of autonomy is, on the contrary, essential for understanding modernism historically. Disputing the prevailing skepticism about autonomy, Andrew Goldstone shows that the pursuit of relative
independence within society is modernism's distinctive way of relating to its contexts. Modernist autonomy is grounded in connections to servants and audiences, aging bodies and wardrobe choices; it joins T.S. Eliot to Adorno as exponents of late style and Djuna Barnes to Joyce as anti-communal cosmopolitans. Autonomy reveals new affinities across an expansive modernist field from Henry James and Proust to Stevens and de Man. Drawing on Bourdieu's sociology, formalist reading, and historical
contextualization, this book shows autonomy's range--and its limitations--as a modernist mode of social practice.Nothing less than an argument for a wholesale revision of the
assumptions of modernist studies, Fictions of Autonomy is also an intervention in literary theory. This book shows why anyone interested in literary history, the sociology of culture, and aesthetics needs to take account of the social, stylistic, and political significance of the problem, and the potential, of autonomy.
No aspect of modernist literature has attracted more passionate defenses, or more furious denunciations, than its affinity for the idea of autonomy. A belief in art as a law unto itself is central to the work of many writers from the late nineteenth century to the present. But is this belief just a way of denying art's social contexts, its roots in the lives of its creators, its political and ethical obligations?Fictions of Autonomy
argues that the concept of autonomy is, on the contrary, essential for understanding modernism historically. Disputing the prevailing skepticism about autonomy, Andrew Goldstone shows that the pursuit of relative
independence within society is modernism's distinctive way of relating to its contexts. Modernist autonomy is grounded in connections to servants and audiences, aging bodies and wardrobe choices; it joins T.S. Eliot to Adorno as exponents of late style and Djuna Barnes to Joyce as anti-communal cosmopolitans. Autonomy reveals new affinities across an expansive modernist field from Henry James and Proust to Stevens and de Man. Drawing on Bourdieu's sociology, formalist reading, and historical
contextualization, this book shows autonomy's range--and its limitations--as a modernist mode of social practice.Nothing less than an argument for a wholesale revision of the
assumptions of modernist studies, Fictions of Autonomy is also an intervention in literary theory. This book shows why anyone interested in literary history, the sociology of culture, and aesthetics needs to take account of the social, stylistic, and political significance of the problem, and the potential, of autonomy.
Contents
Series Editors' Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction
An institutional approach
Aesthetic autonomy in practice and in philosophy
Thee fictions of autonomy and their themes
Modernist studies and the expanded field
Autonomy from Labor
In Service to Art for Art's Sake from Wilde to Proust
Aesthetic autonomy? Our servants will do that for us
Wilde: the truth of masks with manners
Huysmans: the decadent master-servant dialectic
Henry James: the subtlety of service
Proust: service in the magic circle
Aestheticist self-consciousness
Autonomy from the Person
Impersonality and Lateness in Eliot and Adorno
Adorno's theory of impersonality
Eliot's late style, 1910-1958
Four Quartets and musical lateness
The late style and the intentional fallacy
Expatriation as Autonomy
Djuna Barnes, James Joyce, and Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism
Nightwood: the luminous deterioration of cosmopolitanism
French nights and the artist's lifestyle
Wandering Jews, wandering Americans
"Vagaries Malicieux": losing all connection at the Deux Magots
Stephen Dedalus's hat
Literature without External Reference
Tautology in Wallace Stevens and Paul de Man
The aesthete is the aesthete
The Academy of Fine Ideas: Stevens and de Man in the university
De Man, modernism, and the correspondence theory
The sound of autonomy
The plain sense of tautology
Epilogue: Autonomy Now
Autonomy, literary study, and knowledge production
Autonomy abroad: proliferation on the world stage
The truth about fictions of autonomy
Index
Andrew Goldstone is Assistant Professor of English at Rutgers University.
"In this wonderfully surprising and original study, Andrew
Goldstone recovers a consistent recourse in modernism to 'fictions
of autonomy,' designed precisely to mediate relations between works
of art and the social and political domains. Goldstone's procedure
is not to rehearse all the old arguments for and against autonomy
but to show us how the relative autonomy of art was experienced and
figured in a broad range of works. The result is a rich new history
of
modernism, from which the concept of autonomy emerges as an
abstraction blooded rather than bloodied." --John Guillory, author
of Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation
"Fictions of Autonomy develops a fresh and interesting argument
about four different facets of aesthetic autonomy, fleshed out
through reference to a wide range of literary and theoretical
texts. The manuscript is always a pleasure to read, and the
pairings of texts in individual chapters are persuasively
accomplished." --Rita Felski, author of Uses of Literature
"In recent decades--even despite the affirmative renaissance of
modernist studies since the 1990s--'autonomy' has not seemed a
redeemable idea; indeed it has seemed only an idea to demystify and
dismiss. Fictions of Autonomy asks that we approach the concept
with more intelligence; and it models that intelligence with no
little brilliance and with remarkable ingenuity." --Robert L.
Caserio, author of The Novel in England, 1900-1950: History and
Theory
"The author's thoughtful and important consideration of literary
autonomy reopens a
provocative conversation with new insight, and it is intelligently
and articulately conveyed...Highly recommended." --Choice
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