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Modernist Fiction and Vagueness marries the artistic and philosophical versions of vagueness, linking the development of literary modernism to changes in philosophy. This book argues that the problem of vagueness - language's unavoidable imprecision - led to transformations in both fiction and philosophy in the early twentieth century. Both twentieth-century philosophers and their literary counterparts (including James, Eliot, Woolf, and Joyce) were fascinated by the vagueness of words and the dream of creating a perfectly precise language. Building on recent interest in the connections between analytic philosophy, pragmatism, and modern literature, Modernist Fiction and Vagueness demonstrates that vagueness should be read not as an artistic problem but as a defining quality of modernist fiction.
Modernist Fiction and Vagueness marries the artistic and philosophical versions of vagueness, linking the development of literary modernism to changes in philosophy. This book argues that the problem of vagueness - language's unavoidable imprecision - led to transformations in both fiction and philosophy in the early twentieth century. Both twentieth-century philosophers and their literary counterparts (including James, Eliot, Woolf, and Joyce) were fascinated by the vagueness of words and the dream of creating a perfectly precise language. Building on recent interest in the connections between analytic philosophy, pragmatism, and modern literature, Modernist Fiction and Vagueness demonstrates that vagueness should be read not as an artistic problem but as a defining quality of modernist fiction.
Preface; Acknowledgments; Introduction: linguistic turns and literary modernism; 1. 'The Re-instatement of the Vague': the James Brothers and Charles S. Peirce; 2. When in December 1910?: Virginia Woolf, Bertrand Russell, and the question of vagueness; 3. A dream of international precision: James Joyce, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and C. K. Ogden; 4. Conclusion. To criticize the criticism: T. S. Eliot and the eradication of vagueness; Notes; Index.
Modernist Fiction and Vagueness marries the artistic and philosophical versions of vagueness, linking the development of literary modernism to changes in philosophy.
Megan Quigley is Assistant Professor of English at Villanova University, Pennsylvania. Her work has appeared in The Cambridge Companion to European Modernism, Modernism/modernity, Philosophy and Literature, and the James Joyce Quarterly. Quigley won a Harry Ransom Center Fellowship to the University of Texas, Austin (2011–12), and in 2013, she was a Fellow at the Huntington Library in Pasadena.
'… deeply engaging … persuasive … an illuminating reassessment …'
David James, The Times Literary Supplement
'Megan Quigley has succeeded in two ways. Her book is not only a
wholly succinct review of the element of vagueness in modernist
writing, but a work which inspires readers to discover for
themselves new connections between philosophy and literature.'
Martin Glick, OCCT Review
'The philosophic and literary figures in this book have long been
canonical and so long been the subjects of critical industries;
Quigley provides not only new ways to read them, but also, in her
thorough bibliographic work, a resource for literary scholars …
This is a book that is both dense with information and still a
pleasure to read.' Johanna Winant, Modernism/modernity
'Modernist Fiction and Vagueness offers a compelling new
interdisciplinary approach through which to account for the
relationship between English language literary modernism and the
two predominant countervailing forces in twentieth-century
Anglo-American philosophy.' Karen Zumhagen-Yekplé, Woolf Studies
Annual
'Modernist Fiction and Vagueness affords us a rich and nuanced
portrait of a conceptual quandary - equal parts philosophical and
literary - that in its grandest implications can help us to rethink
how we read, and to what end.' Joel Childers, Modern Language
Notes
'… one of the most fantastic implications of Quigley's book is that
not only were early twentieth-century philosophers and writers
involved in a much profounder dialogue than our intellectual
histories typically admit, but that in many ways the period's
philosophies of formal precision and language-based objectivity
needed to be inflected through modernist art … Given the brood and
convincing array of evidence Quigley amasses to prove this point,
perhaps the greatest question left by Modernist Fiction and
Vagueness is why few people have written anything like it before
now.' Jeffrey Blevins, MAKE Literary Magazine (makemag.com)
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