Utopian Generations
The Political Horizon of Twentieth-Century Literature
Chapter One
Introduction
Whoever hasn't yet arrived at the clear realization that there might be a
greatness existing entirely outside his own sphere and for which he might
have absolutely no feeling; whoever hasn't at least felt obscure intimations
concerning the approximate location of this greatness in the geography of
the human spirit: that person either has no genius in his own sphere, or
else he hasn't been educated yet to the niveau of the classic.
-Friedrich Schlegel, Critical Fragment 36
Modernism and African Literature
This book argues for establishing the interpretive horizon of twentieth-century
literature at capitalism's internal limit. In the classical Marxian conception
this limit is the rift between capital and labor, but this rift knows many
displacements, the most important of which is the division of the globe between
wealthy nations and a much larger and poorer economic periphery. The literary
texts primarily conside ... read full excerpt from Utopian Generations: The Political Horizon of Twentieth-Century Literature ebook