Literary Impressionism and Modernist Aesthetics

by Jesse Matz

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521033015
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	01/18/2007
Pages:	292
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 8.98(h) x 0.71(d)
Lexile:	1450L (what's this?)

About the Author

Jesse Matz is Assistant Professor of English at Harvard University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments; Introduction: Proust's deathless analogy; 1. Impressions of modernity; 2. Pater's homoerotic impression; 3. The woman of genius; 4. The distant labourer; 5. Woolf's phenomenological impression; 6. Three Impressionist allegories; Conclusion: Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Bell; Notes; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"[a] worthy contribution to the ethics and politics of literary Modernism." Woolf Studies Annual

From the Publisher