Silent Film and the Formations of U.S. Literary Culture: Literature in Motion

by Sarah Gleeson-White

Overview

Silent Film and the Formations of U.S. Literary Culture: Literature in Motion argues that the emergence of motion pictures constituted a defining moment in U.S. literary history. Author Sarah Gleeson-White discovers what happened to literary culture-both popular and higher-brow—when inserted into the spectacular world of motion pictures during the early decades of the twentieth century. How did literary culture respond to, and how was it altered by, the development of motion pictures, literature's exemplar and rival in narrative realism and enthrallment? Gleeson-White draws on extensive archival film and literary materials, and unearths a range of collaborative, cross-media expressive and industrial practices to reveal the manifold ways in which early-twentieth-century literary culture sought both to harness and temper the reach of motion pictures.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780197558058
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	05/14/2024
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.79(d)

About the Author

Sarah Gleeson-White is Associate Professor of English at the University of Sydney. She has published widely on early twentieth-century U.S. literature and film in PMLA, Modernism/modernity, African American Review and elsewhere. Her books include William Faulkner at Twentieth Century-Fox: The Annotated Screenplays, Strange Bodies: Gender and Identity in the Novels of Carson McCullers, and, as co-editor, The New William Faulkner Studies.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Literature in Motion
Chapter 1. Starring the Author: Literary Celebrity and Popular Authorship
Chapter 2. Black Authorship at the Movies: Oscar Micheaux, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Wallace Thurman
Chapter 3. Novel Forms: Rose Atwood's "A Man's Duty," Oscar Micheaux's The Masquerade: An Historical Novel, Willa Cather's A Lost Lady
Chapter 4. Readerly Pleasures: Screen Reading, and The Motion Picture Story Magazine
Afterword. Roaming with Vachel Lindsay and Oscar Micheaux
Works Cited
Notes

Editorial Reviews

"Silent Film and the Formations of U.S. Literary Culture elegantly maps the ways silent cinema reshaped American literary culture. If you're wondering where the study of film and literature should go, Sarah Gleeson-White shows the way." — Jordan Brower, Assistant Professor of English, University of Kentucky

"Silent Film and the Formations of U.S. Literary Culture is striking for its ambitions and its generosity. In it, Sarah Gleeson-White defines a pervasive and significant phenomenon that has been heretofore ignored: her term 'motion-picture print culture' so perfectly defines the proliferation of film-engaged texts and texts on film that it will surely become part of the lexicon for describing the period's cultural exchanges. Beginning by identifying film's effects on authorship and ending with an analysis of how readers, too, were changed by 'motion-picture print culture,' this book is a model for reading new cultural forms, from the author cameo to the storyization." — Katherine Fusco, Associate Professor of English, University of Nevada, Reno

"Silent Film and the Formations of U.S. Literary Culture: Literature in Motion offers an exciting model of rigorous archival labour to recuperate undervalued cultural objects. Gleeson-White's work should inspire cultural historians across disciplines to bold new interpretive endeavours in the archives." — Eden Rea-Hedrick, Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television

"Silent Film and the Formations of U.S. Literary Culture: Literature in Motion offers an exciting model of rigorous archival labour to recuperate undervalued cultural objects. Gleeson-White's work should inspire cultural historians across disciplines to bold new interpretive endeavours in the archives." — Eden Rea-Hedrick, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television

From the Publisher