Buch, Englisch, 220 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 342 g
Modernism, Libel Law, and the Roman a Clef
Buch, Englisch, 220 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 342 g
Reihe: Modernist Literature and Culture
ISBN: 978-0-19-992293-2
Verlag: Oxford University Press
Sean Latham summons cases of the novel's social notoriety--and the numerous legal scandals the form provoked--to articulate the material networks of reception and circulation through which modernism took shape, revealing a little explored popular history within its development. Producers as well as consumers used elements of the controversial roman á clef, a genre that challenges the idea of fiction as autonomous from the social and political world. In turn, this widespread practice provoked not only a generative aesthetic crisis, but also a gradually unfolding legal quandary that led Britain's highest courts to worry that fiction itself might be illegal. Modernism sat squarely, for a time, between literature and the law.
With skillful close readings aided by extensive archival research, Latham illuminates the world of backbiting, gossip, litigation, and sensationalism through chapters on Oscar Wilde's trial, Joyce's Ulysses, celebrity salons, and Parisian bohemia. Original, colorful, and perceptive, The Art of Scandal both salvages the reputation of the roman á clef form and traces its curious itinerary through the early twentieth century.
Seeking out the best new interdisciplinary work, this series explores the cultural bearings of literary modernism across multiple fields, geographies, symbolic forms, and media.