Historical Fictions

Klappentext In Historical Fictions Hugh Kenner applies his extraordinarily nimble mind and unrivaled style to the alchemy of speech turning into language, language becoming art, and art finally settling down as culture. A variety of literary topics are addressed in forty-three lively, often humorous, and wonderfully informative essays. With his trenchant, famously entertaining touch, Kenner explores the role of counting in literature (Joyce and St. Augustine shared a preference for the number eleven); the extravagant efforts through the ages to preserve the Iliad and the Odyssey (focusing on Ezra Pound's contributions); and Tom Wolfe's prose through the purple decades (Kenner calls him "the nonchalant master of the neon-piped sentence"). Other writers who fall under Kenner's appraising gaze include Flann O'Brien, H.D., Ernest Hemingway, Sylvia Plath, Dante, Leslie Fiedler, Wallace Stevens, Saul Bellow, William Carlos Williams, Samuel Beckett, and Vladimir Nabokov.In this work, Hugh Kenner applies his attention to the alchemy of speech turning into language, language becoming art, and art finally settling down as culture. A variety of literary topics are addressed in 43 lively and often humorous essays, from St Augustine, through Tom Wolfe, to Nabokov.

Auteur

Hugh Kenner was the Franklin and Callaway Professor of English at the University of Georgia. He is the author of more than twenty-five books, including "The Pound Era," "Joyce's Voices," and "Chuck Jones: A Flurry of Drawings."

Résumé
In this work, Hugh Kenner applies his attention to the alchemy of speech turning into language, language becoming art, and art finally settling down as culture. A variety of literary topics are addressed in 43 lively and often humorous essays, from St Augustine, through Tom Wolfe, to Nabokov.