From Herman Melville's claim that failure is the true test of greatness to Henry Adams's self-identification with the mortifying failure in [his] long education and William Faulkner's eagerness to be judged by his splendid failure to do the impossible, the rhetoric of failure has served as a master trope of modernist American literary expression. David Ball's magisterial study addresses the fundamental questions of language, meaning, and authority that run counter to well-rehearsed claims of American innocence and positivity, beginning with the American Renaissance and extending into modernist and contemporary literature. The rhetoric of failure was used at various times to engage artistic ambition, the arrival of advanced capitalism, and a rapidly changing culture, not to mention sheer exhaustion. False Starts locates a lively narrative running through American literature that consequently queries assumptions about the development of modernism in the United States.
Product Identifiers
Publisher
Northwestern University Press
ISBN-13
9780810131132
eBay Product ID (ePID)
209239640
Product Key Features
Author
David M. Ball
Publication Name
False Starts: the Rhetoric of Failure and the Making of American Modernism
Format
Paperback
Language
English
Subject
History
Publication Year
2014
Type
Textbook
Number of Pages
248 Pages
Dimensions
Item Height
229mm
Item Width
152mm
Additional Product Features
Title_Author
David M. Ball
Topic
Literature
Country/Region of Manufacture
United States
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