Modernism - Literary Movements, English Fiction & Prose Literature - General & Miscellaneous - Literary Criticism, Modern Aesthetics, Art & Literature, Modern Philosophy - General & Miscellaneous, English Fiction & Prose Literature - 20th Century - Litera

Literary Impressionism and Modernist Aesthetics

Name: Literary Impressionism and Modernist Aesthetics
Author: Jesse Matz
ISBN: 9780521033015

by Jesse Matz

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Overview

Jesse Matz examines the writing of such modernists as Henry James, Joseph Conrad and Virginia Woolf, who used the word "impression" to describe what they wanted their fiction to present. Matz redefines literary Impressionism, focusing on the way that impressions destroy standard perceptual distinctions between thinking and sensing, believing and suspecting. He argues that these writers favored not immediate subjective sense, but rather a mode that would mediate perceptual distinctions. Just as impressions fall somewhere between thought and sense, Impressionist fiction occupies the middle ground between opposite ways of engaging with the world. Reconceiving Impressionist fiction in these terms, this wide-ranging study addresses the problems of perception and representation that occupied the great Modernist writers.

Synopsis

Matz examines the writing of such modernists as James, Conrad and Woolf, who used the word "impression" to describe what they wanted their fiction to present. Matz argues that these writers did not favor immediate subjective sense, but rather a mode that would mediate perceptual distinctions. Just as impressions fall somewhere between thought and sense, impressionist fiction occupies the middle ground between opposite ways of engaging with the world. This study addresses the problems of perception and representation that occupied writers in the early decades of the twentieth century.