Description
Postmodernism has had its day. Are we now in the era of epimodernism? Reinterpreting the six "memos" that Italo Calvino suggested more than thirty years ago for "the new Millennium", in this acclaimed book Emmanuel Bouju identifies six new values for literature in the twenty-first century: Superficiality, Secrecy, Energy, Acceleration, Credit, and Follow Through. Based on the principal meanings of the Ancient Greek prefix epi - surface, contact, origin, extension, duration, authority, and finality - these values represent six different ways of relating to the legacy of modernist utopias, reorienting postmodern critique and rebooting, with all due irony, its various forms of engagement and empowerment. Equal parts cultural criticism and literary creation, this highly original essay both enacts and explores the epimodern turn in contemporary European literature. Rigorous and humorous, provocative and playful, Epimodernism helps us to understand what literature can describe, imagine, and invent in our challenging times.
Author: Emmanuel Bouju
Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
Published: 03/31/2023
Pages: 218
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.94lbs
Size: 8.27h x 5.83w x 0.56d
ISBN13: 9783031099236
ISBN10: 3031099230
BISAC Categories:
- Literary Criticism | Semiotics & Theory
- Philosophy | Movements | General
- Literary Criticism | Modern | General
About the Author
Emmanuel Bouju is Professor of Comparative Literature at Paris 3 La Sorbonne Nouvelle, and a Senior Member of the Institut Universitaire de France.