Nomadic modernisms and diasporic journeys of Djuna Barnes and Jane Bowles : : "Two Very Serious Ladies" / / by Pavlina Radia.

• VerfasserIn: Radia, Pavlina,
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden, Netherlands : : Brill,, 2016.; ©2016
• Year of Publication: 2016
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Series: Literary Modernism 1.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (252 p.)
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record.

This book traces the artistic trajectories of Djuna Barnes and Jane Bowles, examining their literary representations of the nomadic ethic pervading the twentieth-century expatriate movements in and out of America. The book argues that these authors contribute to the nomadic aesthetic of American modernism: its pastoral ideographies, (post)colonial ecologies, as well as regional and transcultural varieties. Mapping the pastoral moment in different temporalities and spaces (Barnes representing the 1920s expatriation in Europe while Bowles comments on the 1940s exodus to Mexico and North Africa), this book suggests that Barnes and Bowles counter the critical trend associating American modernity primarily with urban spaces, and instead locate the nomadic thrust of their times in the (post)colonial history of the American frontier.

Table of Contents

Preliminary Material -- Introduction: “Mobility, the Quest for the Sublime”: Nomadic Modernisms, Aesthetic Travels, and Diasporic Journeys -- Introduction to Part 1 -- Short Stories and Renegade “Night Woods” -- The Landless Race of Ryder and the Ryder Aesthetes: Mock Almanacs of Experimentation and Intermediality -- “The Pastures in Which the Night Feeds”: The Heart Politics and the Music of Holy(Night)Wood -- Métachorie as Decomposition Illustrated: The Dance of Aesthetic Synthesis in Barnes’s Journalism, Poetry, and One-Act Plays -- “There’s Nothing like Destruction for an Aim”: The Antiphon’s Theatre of Ideas or State Politics? -- Introduction to Part 2 -- Tawdry Nomadographies and Transcultural Frontiers: Two Serious Ladies and the Politics of Nomadism -- Short Stories and the Vendetta of Nomadic Politics -- Theatre of Pastoral Cruelty -- Conclusion: “Two Very Serious Ladies” and Their Journeys -- Works Cited -- Index.