Exoteric Modernisms: Progressive Era Realism and the Aesthetics of Everyday Life

Research output: Book/ReportBookpeer-review

Abstract

This book is an account of how American realism in the Progressive Era contributed to debates about modernity. It uses the anthropological theories of Franz Boas, and Jacques Ranciere’s work on aesthetics and politics to develop a mode of reading class and culture that challenges conventional interpretations that pit the two modes of representation in opposition. It paints a picture of the late-nineteenth century, prior to modernism, as an aesthetically exciting, original, and politically radical stage in American life to reinvigorate realism as a radical aesthetic practice, with implications for understandings of American literature both in the past and into the future.

Original languageEnglish
PublisherEdinburgh University Press
Number of pages258
ISBN (Electronic)9781474456753, 9781474456746
ISBN (Print)9781474456722
Publication statusPublished - 22 Sept 2023

Publication series

NameModern American Literature and the New Twentieth Century
PublisherEdinburgh University Press

Keywords

  • anarchism
  • anthropology
  • class
  • culture
  • modernism
  • realism
  • America
  • Progressive Era

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