FirstCity
Welcome to First City University College Library iPortal | library@firstcity.edu.my | +603-7735 2088 (Ext. 519)
Amazon cover image
Image from Amazon.com

Contingency blues : the search for foundations in American criticism / Paul Jay.

By: Material type: TextTextSeries: Wisconsin project on American writersPublication details: Madison, Wis. : University of Wisconsin Press, �1997.Description: 1 online resource (x, 221 pages)Content type:
  • text
Media type:
  • computer
Carrier type:
  • online resource
ISBN:
  • 0585136246
  • 9780585136240
  • 9780299154134
  • 0299154130
Subject(s): Genre/Form: Additional physical formats: Print version:: Contingency blues.DDC classification:
  • 810.9 20
LOC classification:
  • PS25 .J395 1997eb
Online resources:
Contents:
Modernity and nature in Emerson -- Emerson, Whitman, and the problem of culture -- George Santayana and Van Wyck Brooks: Pragmatism and the genteel tradition -- John Dewey: Pragmatism, modernism, and aesthetic criticism -- Kenneth Burke: Modernism and the motives of rhetoric -- Conclusion: Rhetoric, neopragmatism, border studies -- Beyond the contingency blues.
Summary: "Paul Jay focuses his analysis on two strands of American criticism. The first, which includes Richard Poirier and Giles Gunn, has attempted to revive what Jay insists is an anachronistic pragmatism derived from Emerson, James, and Dewey. The second, represented most forcefully by Richard Rorty, tends to reduce American criticism to a metadiscourse about the contingent grounds of knowledge. In chapters on Emerson, Whitman, Santayana, Van Wyck Brooks, Dewey, and Kenneth Burke, Jay examines the historical roots of these two positions, which he argues are marked by recurrent attempts to reconcile transcendentalism and pragmatism. A forceful rejection of both kinds of revisionism, Contingency Blues locates an alternative in the work of the "border studies" critics, those who give our interest in contingency a new, more concrete form by taking an historical, cultural, and anthropological approach to the invention of literature, subjectivity community and culture in a pan-American context."--Jacket.
Star ratings
    Average rating: 0.0 (0 votes)
No physical items for this record

Includes bibliographical references (pages 210-216) and index.

Print version record.

Modernity and nature in Emerson -- Emerson, Whitman, and the problem of culture -- George Santayana and Van Wyck Brooks: Pragmatism and the genteel tradition -- John Dewey: Pragmatism, modernism, and aesthetic criticism -- Kenneth Burke: Modernism and the motives of rhetoric -- Conclusion: Rhetoric, neopragmatism, border studies -- Beyond the contingency blues.

"Paul Jay focuses his analysis on two strands of American criticism. The first, which includes Richard Poirier and Giles Gunn, has attempted to revive what Jay insists is an anachronistic pragmatism derived from Emerson, James, and Dewey. The second, represented most forcefully by Richard Rorty, tends to reduce American criticism to a metadiscourse about the contingent grounds of knowledge. In chapters on Emerson, Whitman, Santayana, Van Wyck Brooks, Dewey, and Kenneth Burke, Jay examines the historical roots of these two positions, which he argues are marked by recurrent attempts to reconcile transcendentalism and pragmatism. A forceful rejection of both kinds of revisionism, Contingency Blues locates an alternative in the work of the "border studies" critics, those who give our interest in contingency a new, more concrete form by taking an historical, cultural, and anthropological approach to the invention of literature, subjectivity community and culture in a pan-American context."--Jacket.

English.

eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - Worldwide