Literary Impressionism and Modernist Aesthetics

By Jesse Matz

Book 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.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521803527
• ISBN13: 9780521803526
• Release Date: September 2001
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 290 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.2" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

In every way an oustanding book.

A beautifully written, nuanced argument by a brilliant young man. Informative, passionate and succinct, this is superior literary criticism on every level. In every poetic phrase, Matz outlines and advances a original vision that others in his field may have sensed in glimmers and shadows, but never fully articulated. This study is impressive in both its depth and bredth.