Volume 22 Number 2

Twentieth-Century Poetry, Fiction, Theory

Harry R. Garvin (Ed.)

1976
231 pages
ISBN 0838719341
Bucknell Review

Twentieth-Century Poetry, Fiction, Theory names a problem, an enigma, a radiant mystery. Twentieth-century literature is known for its destruction of old worlds and its construction of new ones, but at its center that literature exhibits, and exhibits the necessity of, the questions of the vitality of its own sources and the meaning of its own resourcefulness. The essays in this volume cohere not by common theme of common approach but by a common dwelling within the problematic core of contemporary literature. The issues addressed here are both fundamental and dialogical: the limits of language (Waldrop and Wasserman) and the need for linguistic form (Stanley and Schwarz); the generation of vital forms (Higdon and Altieri) and the termination of styles (Beebe and Kubal); the sources of creation (Bertholf and Rossman) and the significance of creating (Axelrod and Wirth-Nesher). These essays do not claim to solve the problem of to resolve the enigma of twentieth-century literature; rather, within Twentieth-Century Poetry, Fiction, Theory there radiates the making, unmaking, and remaking of words in which contemporary experience seeks to speak, and to hear, its own meaning.

Contributors: Maurice Beebe, David L. Kugal, David L. Higdon, Hana Wirth-Nesher, Charles Rossman, Daniel R. Schwarz, Jerry Wasserman, Rosemarie Waldrop, Julia P. Stanley, Steven Gould Axelrod, Charles Altieri, and Robert J. Bertholf.

About the editor:

Harry R. Garvin was John P. Crozer Professor of English at Bucknell University.