The Modernist Papers

by Fredric Jameson

Cultural critic Fredric Jameson, renowned for his incisive studies of the passage of modernism to postmodernism, returns to the movement that dramatically broke with all tradition in search of progress for the first time since his acclaimed A Singular Modernity .

The Modernist Papers is a tour de force of analysis and criticism, in which Jameson brings his dynamic and acute thought to bear on the modernist literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Jameson discusses modernist poetics, including intensive discussions of the work of Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarmé, Wallace Stevens, Joyce, Proust, and Thomas Mann. He explores the peculiarities of the American literary field, taking in William Carlos Williams and the American epic, and examines the language theories of Gertrude Stein. Refusing to see modernism as simply a Western phenomenon he also pays close attention to its Japanese expression; while the complexities of a late modernist representation of twentieth-century politics are articulated in a concluding section on Peter Weiss’s novel The Aesthetics of Resistance.

Challenging our previous understanding of the literature of this period, this monumental work will come to be regarded as the classic study of modernism.

Genres: Philosophy, Cultural, Nonfiction, Theory, Literary Criticism

426 pages, Hardcover

First published July 9, 2007

About the author

Fredric Jameson was an American literary critic, philosopher and Marxist political theorist. He was best known for his analysis of contemporary cultural trends, particularly his analysis of postmodernity and capitalism. Jameson's best-known books include Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991) and The Political Unconscious (1981).

Reviews

[Sencer Turunç · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yine okurken zorlandığım bir metinler silsilesi...

"Her yorum, aynı zamanda bir üst yorum olmak zorundadır."

"Don Quijote, hiç de bir karakter değildir aslında; daha ziyade, Cervantes'e kitabını yazma olanağı veren düzenleyici bir aygıttır ve farklı türden birtakım anektodları tek bir biçim içinde tutan bir ip işlevi görür."

"Sınıf, ideoloji ve kültür tarihi karşısında biz her zaman belirli bir durumdayız, asla boş birer levhadan (tabula rasa) ibaret olamayız ve hakikat asla statik bir sistem halinde var olamaz, hep daha genel bir gizemsizleştirme sürecinin parçası olmak zorundadır."

"Bir haz ile bir saplantı arasındaki farkı anlatmanın yolu, hazsız da yapabilecek olmamızdır."

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exemplifies the tremendous verve and acuity of Jameson's practice of criticism. The texts in this compendium are signposts guiding us through his development into the eponymous figure he is today. I most highly recommend "The Poetics of Totality" and "Joyce or Proust?" but even where one is not familiar with the subject, Jameson is indefatigably interesting.

[moi, k.y.a.]

53. syfda bıraktım, sonra okuyacağım bu kitabı

[Christian Haines · Rating 4 out of 5]

Essentially, this is a collection of Jameson's past essays on the subject of modernism. It's billed, correctly I think, as a companion piece or appendix to the much tighter volume A Singular Modernity. A couple of the pieces are classics - "Modernism and Imperialism," "Ulysses and History" - and a couple are new - "Joyce or Proust?" "The Poetics of Totality." The essays can be repetitive, at times, as they all revolve around themes of reification, fragmentation, and the dialectic between ideology and utopia (see The Political Unconscious). That being said, Jameson can produce quite interesting and insightful variations on these themes, as when he suggests that Wallace Stevens is a poet who abolishes poetry by blurring the lines between the poetic and theoretical. I would recommend reading this alongside A Singular Modernity, since these pieces all suggest a larger framework, which Jameson diligently provided in said book (i.e. what is modernism proper? what is "late modernism" or the "ideology of modernism"? what is the relation between modernism and modernization and modernity? and how is modernism geographically and temporally dispersed?). Finally, one could always hope that Jameson would pay a little more attention to what he once called "third-world literature" - it would be nice to see Jameson write more extensively on Marquez, Carpentier, or others. But that simply isn't what he is doing or, most likely, going to do, and there are other critics who do the job nicely. This is an excellent volume of essays, though it will never become a central piece in studies of Jameson.

[Joseph Fontinha · Rating 5 out of 5]

The range of the essays and their relation to popular culture is mind blowing. The essays on Kafka and on Wallace Stevens are truly eye opening. Not easy to read, never rolling off the tongue, but always rewarding to get though. He is one of my favorites and this was one of my favorites of his.

[A L]

Articles and shorter essays like these is where you find Jameson at his best and most light-hearted.

[Jay Rothermel · Rating 5 out of 5]

A bravura collection of essays on Gertrude Stein, Wallace Stevens, Joyce, Proust, and painters including Cezanne and DeKooning. Very enjoyable.

[Ziad · Rating 3 out of 5]

Parochial, at best.

[Mariam Rawwas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Triangulating Marxist, post-/structuralist, and psychoanalytic interpretative methods, Jameson offers a tour de force examination of Williams, Céline, Mann, Kafka, Joyce, Forster, Proust, Stevens, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, De Kooning, Cézanne, Yeats, Karatani, Sōseki, Mallarmé, Stein, Oe, Weiss, et al., in dizzying fashion. His ability to move between interpretive registers in response to the specific work under discussion is admirable, and I find most useful in his methodology the idea that oppositions are established as heuristic not to exhaust the meaning of a text, but rather precisely to mark out what falls outside or beyond them, as demonstrated most elegantly through his mobilization of Greimas' semiotic square.

[Funda Guzer · Rating 5 out of 5]

İlk yarısını okumak çok çok zor . Elimden bırakmak üzere idim. Ama ikinci yarı şu gibi aktı . Daha tanıdık eserler üzerinden ilerlemesi sebebi ile olabilir . Jameson çok zeki bir kişilik olduğuna eminim. Eserlerinde geçen eserleri bilip Jameson u okumak eminim daha keyifli olacaktır . Kesinlikle yeniden okunası . Bu çağda bu kadar zeki insanlar pek bulunmuyor . Değeri bilinsin ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫🙏🏻

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Also Jameson at his best.