Charles Olson and American modernism : the practice of the self /

This volume situates the work of American poet Charles Olson (1910-1970) at the centre of the early post-war American avant-garde. It shows Olson to have been one of the major advocates and theorists of American modernism in the late 1940s and early 1950s; a poet who responded fully and variously to...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Byers, Mark, 1988- (Author)
Published: Oxford University Press,
Publisher Address: Oxford :
Publication Dates: 2018.
Literature type: Book
Language: English
Edition: First edition.
Series: Oxford English monographs.
Subjects:
Summary: This volume situates the work of American poet Charles Olson (1910-1970) at the centre of the early post-war American avant-garde. It shows Olson to have been one of the major advocates and theorists of American modernism in the late 1940s and early 1950s; a poet who responded fully and variously to the political, ethical, and aesthetic urgencies driving innovation across contemporary American art. Reading Olson's work alongside that of contemporaries associated with the New York Schools of painting and music (as well as the exiled Frankfurt School), the book draws on Olson's published and unpublished writings to establish an original account of early post-war American modernism. The development of Olson's work is seen to illustrate two primary drivers of formal innovation in the period: the evolution of a new model of political action pivoting around the radical individual and, relatedly, a powerful new critique of instrumental reason and the Enlightenment tradition.
Carrier Form: 206 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm.
Bibliography: Includes bibliographical references (pages [185]-199) and index.
ISBN: 9780198813255
0198813252
Index Number: PS3529
CLC: I712.072
Call Number: I712.072/B993
Contents: The new failure of nerve -- From the barricade to the bedroom -- Uninhabited kingdoms, new worlds of space -- Thrown down glyphs -- Difficulties of discovery -- Egocentric predicaments -- Maximus: 'The practice of the self'.