Synopses & Reviews
Review
“The most successful attempt to date at a poststructuralist literary history. Nelson’s book examines the forces that have bequeathed to us a literary academy in which most of modernism has been forgotten, and ‘most of us . . . do not know that the knowledge is gone.’”—Michael Bérubé, Village Voice Literary Supplement
Review
"Nelson's book will make it impossible for anyone to think about either 'modern American poetry' or 'literary history' in quite the same way as before. . . . From its hauntingly successful premise (that the history of modernist culture is one we no longer know we have forgotten) to its recovery of the political questions so many forgotten modern poets looked straight in the eye,
Repression and Recovery urges that we think about doing literary history so differently that this activity will always be in crisis, unsettling, even subversive."—Andrew Ross, Princeton University
Review
"Nelson's meditation on modern poetry is at once postmodern and decidedly old-fashioned. While calling theoretical attention to 'poetry' as a disingenuous function of 'literariness' and 'canonicity,' his work also returns to us the prodigality of the modern moment in American poetic production. The result is literary history of a new order—both theoretically challenging and beautifully illustrated."—Houston Baker, University of Pennsylvania
The Wisconsin Project on American Writers
About the Author
Cary Nelson is professor of English and founding director of the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.