Improvisation and the Making of American Literary Modernism

Improvisation and the Making of American Literary Modernism PDF Author: Rob Wallace
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1441122893
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 210

Get Book Here

Book Description
Improvisation, despite its almost ubiquitous presence in many art forms, is notoriously misunderstood and mysterious. Although earlier strands of American philosophy and art emphasized what might be called improvisational practices, it was during the modernist period that improvisational practice and theory began to make a significant impact on art and culture, specifically via the African American musical forms of jazz and blues. This musical development held important consequences for the larger artistic, cultural, and political life of America as a whole-and, eventually, the world. The historical convergence of jazz and philosophical currents like pragmatism in American culture provides the framework for Wallace's discussion of improvisation in literary modernism. Focusing on poets ranging from Gertrude Stein to Langston Hughes, Wallace's work provides a fresh perspective on the complex circuits of modernist culture. Improvisation and The Making of American Literary Modernism will be of interest to scholars of poetry, music, American and modernist studies, and race and ethnic studies.

Improvisation and the Making of American Literary Modernism

Improvisation and the Making of American Literary Modernism PDF Author: Rob Wallace
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1441122893
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 210

Get Book Here

Book Description
Improvisation, despite its almost ubiquitous presence in many art forms, is notoriously misunderstood and mysterious. Although earlier strands of American philosophy and art emphasized what might be called improvisational practices, it was during the modernist period that improvisational practice and theory began to make a significant impact on art and culture, specifically via the African American musical forms of jazz and blues. This musical development held important consequences for the larger artistic, cultural, and political life of America as a whole-and, eventually, the world. The historical convergence of jazz and philosophical currents like pragmatism in American culture provides the framework for Wallace's discussion of improvisation in literary modernism. Focusing on poets ranging from Gertrude Stein to Langston Hughes, Wallace's work provides a fresh perspective on the complex circuits of modernist culture. Improvisation and The Making of American Literary Modernism will be of interest to scholars of poetry, music, American and modernist studies, and race and ethnic studies.

Improvisation and the Making of American Literary Modernism

Improvisation and the Making of American Literary Modernism PDF Author: Robert Neil Andrew Wallace
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780549843467
Category : Blues (Music) in literature
Languages : en
Pages : 644

Get Book Here

Book Description
This dissertation focuses on the aesthetic, social, and philosophical dimensions of improvisation in the life and work of four modernist writers: Langston Hughes, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, and Wallace Stevens. Although earlier strands of American philosophy and art put a premium on what might be called improvisational practices--such as Emerson's urge to create a new American literature, which Whitman later put into practice--it was during the first few decades of the 20th Century that improvisational practice and theory began to make a significant impact on art and culture. In the American context this focus on improvisation cannot be separated from the development of blues, jazz, and subsequent African American musical forms. Beyond demonstrating how jazz "influenced" the writers in this dissertation, however, I also analyze the ways in which the cultural interactions and conflicts that created jazz, as well as the aesthetic elements informing improvised practices in general, have been overlooked in the wider scholarship and historical accounts of literary modernism. To discuss improvisation in a literary context, I draw on theoretical tools developed by Philip Pastras, as well as the burgeoning field of critical improvisation studies. I locate improvisation not just in the strands of jazz and blues aesthetic in the air during the 20s and 30s, but also in the cognitive theories of William James, and the overall primitivist discourse that brings various improvisatory literary and musical traditions into contact and conflict with so-called High Modernist aesthetics.

Improvisation and the Making of American Literary Modernism

Improvisation and the Making of American Literary Modernism PDF Author: Rob Wallace
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1441169466
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 211

Get Book Here

Book Description
>

The Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies, Volume 2

The Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies, Volume 2 PDF Author: George E. Lewis
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190627972
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 592

Get Book Here

Book Description
Improvisation informs a vast array of human activity, from creative practices in art, dance, music, and literature to everyday conversation and the relationships to natural and built environments that surround and sustain us. The two volumes of the Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies gather scholarship on improvisation from an immense range of perspectives, with contributions from more than sixty scholars working in architecture, anthropology, art history, computer science, cognitive science, cultural studies, dance, economics, education, ethnomusicology, film, gender studies, history, linguistics, literary theory, musicology, neuroscience, new media, organizational science, performance studies, philosophy, popular music studies, psychology, science and technology studies, sociology, and sound art, among others.

The Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies

The Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies PDF Author: George Lewis
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019989292X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 601

Get Book Here

Book Description
V. 1. Cognitions -- v. 2. Critical theories

The Improvisation Studies Reader

The Improvisation Studies Reader PDF Author: Rebecca Caines
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136187146
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 479

Get Book Here

Book Description
Interdisciplinary approach chimes with current teaching trends Each section opens with specially commissioned thinkpiece from major scholar The first reader to address improvisation from a performance studies perspective

The Cambridge Companion to the American Modernist Novel

The Cambridge Companion to the American Modernist Novel PDF Author: Joshua L. Miller
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 131603352X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 303

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Cambridge Companion to the American Modernist Novel offers a comprehensive analysis of US modernism as part of a wider, global literature. Both modernist and American literary studies have been reshaped by waves of scholarship that unsettled prior consensuses regarding America's relation to transnational, diasporic, and indigenous identities and aesthetics; the role of visual and musical arts in narrative experimentation; science and technology studies; and allegiances across racial, ethnic, gendered, and sexual social groups. Recent writing on US immigration, imperialism, and territorial expansion has generated fresh and exciting reasons to read or reread modernist novelists, both prominent and forgotten. Written by a host of leading scholars, this Companion provides unique interpretations and approaches to modernist themes, techniques, and texts.

The Routledge Introduction to American Modernism

The Routledge Introduction to American Modernism PDF Author: Linda Wagner-Martin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317538110
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 202

Get Book Here

Book Description
The modernist period was crucial for American literature as it gave writers the chance to be truly innovative and create their own distinct identity. Starting slightly earlier than many guides to modernism this lucid and comprehensive guide introduces the reader to the essential history of the period including technology, religion, economy, class, gender and immigration. These contexts are woven of into discussions of many significant authors and texts from the period. Wagner-Martin brings her years of writing about American modernism to explicate poetry and drama as well as fiction and life-writing. Among the authors emphasized are Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Willa Cather, John Dos Passos, William Carlos Williams, Mike Gold, James T. Farrell, Clifford Odets, John Steinbeck and countless others. A clear and engaging introduction to an exciting period of literature, this is the ultimate guide for those seeking an overview of American Modernism.

Improvisation and Music Education

Improvisation and Music Education PDF Author: Ajay Heble
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131756992X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 294

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book offers compelling new perspectives on the revolutionary potential of improvisation pedagogy. Bringing together contributions from leading musicians, scholars, and teachers from around the world, the volume articulates how improvisation can breathe new life into old curricula; how it can help teachers and students to communicate more effectively; how it can break down damaging ideological boundaries between classrooms and communities; and how it can help students become more thoughtful, engaged, and activist global citizens. In the last two decades, a growing number of music educators, music education researchers, musicologists, cultural theorists, creative practitioners, and ethnomusicologists have suggested that a greater emphasis on improvisation in music performance, history, and theory classes offers enormous potential for pedagogical enrichment. This book will help educators realize that potential by exploring improvisation along a variety of trajectories. Essays offer readers both theoretical explorations of improvisation and music education from a wide array of vantage points, and practical explanations of how the theory can be implemented in real situations in communities and classrooms. It will therefore be of interest to teachers and students in numerous modes of pedagogy and fields of study, as well as students and faculty in the academic fields of music education, jazz studies, ethnomusicology, musicology, cultural studies, and popular culture studies.

The Cambridge Companion to American Modernism

The Cambridge Companion to American Modernism PDF Author: Walter Kalaidjian
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139827146
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 360

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Cambridge Companion to American Modernism provides a comprehensive and authoritative overview of American literary modernism from 1890 to 1939. These original essays by twelve distinguished scholars of international reputation offer critical overviews of the major genres, literary culture, and social contexts that define the current state of Modern American literature and cultural studies. Among the diverse topics covered are nationalism, race, gender and the impact of music and visual arts on literary modernism, as well as overviews of the achievements of American modernism in fiction, poetry and drama. The book concludes with a chapter on modern American criticism. An essential reference guide to the field, the Companion offers readers a chronology of key events and publication dates covering the first half of the twentieth century in the United States, and a bibliography of further reading organized by chapter topics.