Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
  1. Home
  2. Books
  3. Modernist Fiction and Vagueness
  • Cited by 19
      • Show more authors
      • You may already have access via personal or institutional login
    • Select format
    • Publisher:
      Cambridge University Press
      Publication date:
      05 February 2015
      02 February 2015
      ISBN:
      9781316105597
      9781107089594
      9781107461154
      DOI:
      https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316105597
      Dimensions:
      (228 x 152 mm)
      Weight & Pages:
      0.5kg, 244 Pages
      Dimensions:
      (229 x 152 mm)
      Weight & Pages:
      0.37kg, 244 Pages
      • Subjects:
      Literature, English Literature 1900-1945
    You may already have access via personal or institutional login
    • Selected: Digital
    Add to cart View cart Buy from Cambridge.org
    Subjects:
    Literature, English Literature 1900-1945
    Information

    Book description

    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.

    Reviews

    '… deeply engaging … persuasive … an illuminating reassessment …'

    David James Source: 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 Source: 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 Source: 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 Source: 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 Source: 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 Source: MAKE Literary Magazine (makemag.com)

    Refine List

    Actions for selected content:

    Select all | Deselect all
    • View selected items
    • Export citations
    • Download PDF (zip)
    • Save to Kindle
    • Save to Dropbox
    • Save to Google Drive

    Save Search

    You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

    Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
    Cancel
    ×

    Contents

    Contents
    References

    Metrics

    Altmetric attention score

    Full text views

    Total number of HTML views: 0
    Total number of PDF views: 0 *
    Loading metrics...

    Book summary page views

    Total views: 0 *
    Loading metrics...

    * Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

    Usage data cannot currently be displayed.

    Accessibility standard: Unknown

    Why this information is here

    This section outlines the accessibility features of this content - including support for screen readers, full keyboard navigation and high-contrast display options. This may not be relevant for you.

    Accessibility Information

    Accessibility compliance for the HTML of this book is currently unknown and may be updated in the future.