Müller, Timo
The Self as Object in Modernist Fiction

James, Joyce, Hemingway.

Drawing on Bourdieu's theory of the literary field, this study shows an epistemic shift from hierarchical to relational patterns of identity-formation and traces the emergence of a new set of narrative techniques by the modernist avant-garde. The beginnings of literary modernism brought a radically new attitude to the narrated self. Drawing on Bourdieu's theory of the literary field, the study traces this change to an epistemic shift from hierarchical to relational patterns of identity-formation - a shift that writers were among the first to confront. It shows how the modernist avant-garde responded to these developments by developing an objective, analytic perspective on their fictional selves, in effect turning their fiction into laboratories for social action in a relational world. Through detailed readings in the works of Henry James, James Joyce, and Ernest Hemingway, it traces the emergence of a new set of narrative techniques that was at the same time a new epistemological category: the self as object in modernist fiction. 301 Seiten, broschiert (text & theorie; Band 11/Königshausen & Neumann 2010) leichte Lagerspuren/minor shelfwear