The Edge of Modernism: American Poetry and the Traumatic Past

by Walter Kalaidjian

Overview

In The Edge of Modernism, Walter Kalaidjian explores American poetry on genocide, the Holocaust, and total war as well as on postwar social antagonisms, racial oppression, and domestic violence. By asking what it means for traumatic memory to have agency in the American verse tradition, Kalaidjian creates an original historical account of how American poets became witnesses, often unconsciously, to modern extremity. Combining psychoanalytic theory and cultural studies, this intense, sweeping account of modern poetics analyzes the ways in which literary form gives testimony to the trauma of twentieth-century history.

Through close readings of well-known and less familiar poets—among them Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, Edwin Rolfe, Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, Peter Balakian, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Anne Sexton, and Anthony Hecht—Kalaidjian discerns the latent "edge" of modern trauma as it cuts through the literary representations, themes, and formal techniques of twentieth-century American poetics. In this way, The Edge of Modernism advances an innovative and dynamic model of modern periodization.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781421429397
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	03/03/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Walter Kalaidjian is a professor of English at Emory University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1. History's "Black Page": Genocide and Modern American Verse
Chapter 2. The Holocaust at Home
Chapter 3. Harlem Dancers and the Middle Passage
Chapter 4. Specters of Commitment in Modern American Literary Studies
Chapter 5. The Enigma of Witness: Domestic Trauma on and off the Couch
Epilogue. Reading Abu Ghraib
Notes
Index

What People are Saying About This

Vincent B. Leitch

There is nothing quite like this book. A clearly written and broadly researched, sophisticated study extending the scope of today's trauma studies into the analysis and appreciation of American poetry. It is fascinating, quirky, surprising, convincing.

— Vincent B. Leitch, University of Oklahoma

From the Publisher

There is nothing quite like this book. A clearly written and broadly researched, sophisticated study extending the scope of today's trauma studies into the analysis and appreciation of American poetry. It is fascinating, quirky, surprising, convincing.
—Vincent B. Leitch, University of Oklahoma