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American Literature and Immediacy

By Heike Schaefer

American Literature and Immediacy

By Heike Schaefer

0 - Default Title
Description
The search for immediacy, the desire to feel directly connected to people or events, has been a driving force in American literature and media culture for the past two centuries. This book offers the first in-depth study of literary immediacy effects. It shows how the heightened reality effects of photography, film, and television inspired American writers to create new literary forms that would enhance their readers' sense of immediate participation in the world. The study combines close readings of Emerson, Whitman, Stein, Dos Passos, Coover, Foster Wallace, and DeLillo with detailed considerations of visual media to open up a new perspective on literary innovation and the ongoing cultural quest for increased immediacy. It argues that we can better understand how American literature develops when we consider experiments with literary form not only in literary and cultural contexts but also in relation to the emergence of new media, their immediacy effects, and the larger changes in social life that they manifest and provoke.
Product details
Binding:
Paperback
Number of Pages:
328
Release Date:
2025-10-09
Publication Date:
2025-10-09
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Languages:
Original: English
ISBN10:
1108720137
ISBN13:
9781108720137
Weight:
534 g
Height:
152 cm
Width:
229 cm
Thickness:
19 cm
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