Synopses & Reviews
This pathbreaking work uses the approaching conclusion of the second millennium as a context for discussing questions concerning temporal division and narrative continuity. It investigates assumptions about teleology and eschatology while exploring the ways in which temporal division affects the creation and production of cultural texts and, reciprocally, the ways in which narrative techniques, forms, and conventions shape, explain, and justify history. Among the extraordinarily varied subjects addressed in the essays - which emphasize the 1590s, the 1890s, and the 1990s - are storytelling, the nature of time, Frederick Jackson Turner's frontier thesis, the Elizabethan playwrights' depiction of the underworld, mass warfare, immigration, the fin de siècle, W. E. B. Du Bois, Henry James, the historicity of gender, the 'body' of Elizabeth and the Elizabethan stage, and David Cronenberg's film The Fly.
Synopsis
This volume explores the ways in which the ending of centuries affects the creation and production of cultural texts.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 319-378) and index.
Table of Contents
Contributors; Introduction Robert Newman; Part I. Stories of History and Narrative: 1. Games of Chess: A Model of Literary and Cultural Studies Sacvan Bercovitch; 2. Storytelling: historical and ideological Hayden White; 3. Being done with narrative by cubism and AndréMalraux Jean-François Lyotard; 4. Traherne's centuries Susan Stewart; Part II. Projections of Nationalism: 5. Turner's 'Frontier Thesis' as a narrative of reconstruction Brook Thomas; 6. Rogue nationalism Jeffrey Knapp; 7. The (lethal) turn of the twentieth century: war and population control Margot Norris; 8. Border INspection: reflections on crossing the U.S. border Ali Behdad; Part III. Fin de Siècle Fates, Mournings, and In-Betweens: 9. Strange cases, common fates: degeneration and the pleasures of professional reading Stephen D. Arata; 10. Neighbors, strangers, corpses: death and sympathy in the early writings of W. E. B. Du Bois - Susan Mizruchi; 11. What's awkward about The Awkward Age? David McWhirter; Part IV. Narrative Embodiment: Gender and Desire in History: 12. Fin de Siècle, Fin de Sexe: transsexuality, postmodernism, and the death of history Rita Felski; 13. Mourning and misogyny: Hamlet, the revenger's tragedy, and the final progress of Elizabeth I, 1600-1607 Steven Mullaney; 14. Once upon a time, not long ago, O Kathy Acker; 14. 'The sex appeal of the inorganic': posthuman narratives and the construction of desire Thomas Foster; 15. Fin de Siècle and the technological sublime Jennifer Wicke; Notes; Index.