Losing the Plot: Film and Feeling in the Modern Novel

An examination of the relationship between literature and classical Hollywood cinema reveals a profound longing for plot in modernist fiction.

The modernist novel sought to escape what Virginia Woolf called the "tyranny" of plot. Yet even as twentieth-century writers pushed against the constraints of plot-driven Victorian novels, plot kept its hold on them through the influence of another medium: the cinema. Focusing on the novels of Nella Larsen, Djuna Barnes, and William Faulkner--writers known for their affinities and connections to classical Hollywood--Pardis Dabashi links the moviegoing practices of these writers to the tensions between the formal properties of their novels and the characters in them. Even when they did not feature outright happy endings, classical Hollywood films often provided satisfying formal resolutions and promoted normative social and political values. Watching these films, modernist authors were reminded of what they were leaving behind--both formally and in the name of aesthetic experimentalism--by losing the plot.

Author: Pardis Dabashi
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 11/06/2023
Pages: 304
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.95lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.00w x 0.80d
ISBN13: 9780226829258
ISBN10: 0226829251
BISAC Categories:
- Literary Criticism | Modern | 20th Century
- Literary Criticism | American | General

About the Author
Pardis Dabashi is assistant professor in the Department of Literatures in English at Bryn Mawr College and a faculty affiliate in the Film Studies Program and the Middle Eastern, Central Asian, and North African Studies Program. She is the coeditor of The New William Faulkner Studies, with Sarah Gleeson-White.