The Poetics of Transition examines the relationship among American pragmatism and literary modernism via concentrating on the concept that of transition as a topic universal to either routine. Jonathan Levin starts off with the Emersonian concept that transition—the move from one country or situation to a different or, alternately, the figural enactment of that movement—is infused with energy. He then deals a revisionary analyzing of the pragmatists’ view of the permeability of subjective and goal geographical regions and of ways American literary modernists degree this permeability within the language and kind of their writing.
Levin attracts at the pragmatist and neopragmatist writings of William James, John Dewey, George Santayana, Richard Rorty, and Cornel West to light up the paintings of modernist literature. In flip, he illuminates the poetic imperatives of pragmatism by means of tracing the ways that Henry James, Gertrude Stein, and Wallace Stevens trap the instant of transition—a paradoxical second that, as soon as it really is represented in language or paintings, calls for its personal perpetual overcoming. all through, he explores how modernist writers, who're masters at recording such “illegible” moments of transition of their poetry and prose, considerably give a contribution to an multiplied figuring out of pragmatism and its underlying aesthetics. through linking Emerson with the innovative philosophy of turn-of-the-century pragmatism and the experimentation of yank literary modernism, Levin deals new perception into Emerson’s lasting effect on later American philosophers, novelists, and poets.
The Poetics of Transition will curiosity students and scholars within the fields of literary feedback, neopragmatism, literary modernism, and American literature.