English, Department of
Date of this Version
Winter 2010
Citation
Journal of Modern Literature (Winter 2010) 33(2): 24-46.
Abstract
The relation of modernism to immigrant literatures should not be conceived in terms of an opposition between universalistic and particularistic discourses. Rather, we should explore what can be called a modernist transnationalism based on a general universalist argument. Two examples of this transnationalism are explored side by side: Ezra Pound’s and Anzia Yezierska’s definitions of the aesthetic act in terms of translation. The readings show that the critical discourses of these two authors are structured by a belief in universalism while showing opposite possibilities, both generated by modernist transnationalism. The essay concludes that we now need to interpret the cultures of modernism in their variety as contesting political universalities.
Included in
American Literature Commons, Comparative Literature Commons, Literature in English, Anglophone outside British Isles and North America Commons, Literature in English, North America Commons, Modern Literature Commons
Comments
Copyright 2010, University of Indiana Press. Used by permission.