In a strange room : modernism's corpses and mortal obligation

290 Pages·2014·20.025 MB·English

by  Sherman, David

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In a Strange Room
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Modernist Literature & Culture
Kevin J. H. Dettmar & Mark Wollaeger, Series Editors
Consuming Traditions Americanizing Britain
Elizabeth Outka Genevieve Abravanel
Machine Age Comedy Modernism and the New Spain
Michael North Gayle Rogers
Th e Art of Scandal At the Violet Hour
Sean Latham Sarah Cole
Th e Hypothetical Mandarin Fictions of Autonomy
Eric Hayot Andrew Goldstone
Nations of Nothing But Poetry Th e Great American Songbooks
Matthew Hart T .Austin Graham
Modernism & Copyright Without Copyrights
Paul K. Saint-Amour Robert Spoo
Accented America Th e Degenerate Muse
Joshua L. Miller Robin Schulze
Criminal Ingenuity Commonwealth of Letters
Ellen Levy Peter J. Kalliney
Modernism’s Mythic Pose Modernism and Melancholia
Carrie J. Preston Sanja Bahun
Pragmatic Modernism Digital Modernism
Lisa Schoenbach Jessica Pressman
Unseasonable Youth In a Strange Room
Jed Esty David Sherman
World Views
Jon Hegglund
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In a Strange
Room
Modernism’s Corpses and Mortal
Obligation
David Sherman
1
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1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sherman, David, 1971–
In a Strange Room: Modernism's Corpses and Mortal Obligation / David Sherman.
pages cm. — (Modernist Literature & Culture ; 23)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–19–933388–2 (acid-free paper) 1. Modernism (Literature)
2. Death in literature. I. Title.
PN56.M54S55 2014
809′.9112—dc23

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
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For my parents, in friendship and love—
fi rst teachers,
fi rst readers,
fi rst storytellers.
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Contents

Series Editors’ Foreword ix
Acknowledgments xi
List of Abbreviations xiii
Introduction: Toward the Modernist Corpse 1
1. Th e State’s Unending Vigil: Owen’s and Woolf’s Unknown Warrior 43
2. Joyce, Faulkner, and the Modernist Burial Plot 108
3. Th e Erotics of Mortal Obligation in Eliot and Barnes 146
Coda: Williams and Stevens, Inventing Farewell 1 94
Notes 205
Bibliography 251
Index 269
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