Competing Stories

Modernist Authors, Newspapers, and the Movies

James Stamant

Major changes in media in the late 19th and early 20th centuries challenged traditional ideas about artistic representation and opened new avenues for authors working in the modernist period. Modernist authors’ reactions to this changing media landscape were often fraught with complications and shed light on the difficulty of negotiating, understanding, and depicting media. The author of Competing Stories: Modernist Authors, Newspapers, and the Movies argues that negative depictions of newspapers and movies, in modernist fiction, largely stem from worries about the competition for modern audiences and the desire for control over storytelling and reflections of the modern world. This book looks at a moment of major change in media, the dominance of mass media that began with the primarily visual media of newspapers and movies, and the ways that authors like Ernest Hemingway, Zora Neale Hurston, James Joyce, Djuna Barnes, and others responded. The author contends that an examination of this moment may facilitate a better understanding of the relationship between media and authorship in our constantly shifting media landscape.

Lexington Books

Pages: 208 • Trim: 6¼ x 9

978-1-4985-9344-1 • Hardback • November 2019 • $111.00 • (£85.00)

978-1-4985-9345-8 • eBook • November 2019 • $105.50 • (£82.00)

Subjects: Literary Criticism / Modern / 20th Century

Competing Stories

Modernist Authors, Newspapers, and the Movies

Hardback

eBook

Summary

Major changes in media in the late 19th and early 20th centuries challenged traditional ideas about artistic representation and opened new avenues for authors working in the modernist period. Modernist authors’ reactions to this changing media landscape were often fraught with complications and shed light on the difficulty of negotiating, understanding, and depicting media. The author of Competing Stories: Modernist Authors, Newspapers, and the Movies argues that negative depictions of newspapers and movies, in modernist fiction, largely stem from worries about the competition for modern audiences and the desire for control over storytelling and reflections of the modern world. This book looks at a moment of major change in media, the dominance of mass media that began with the primarily visual media of newspapers and movies, and the ways that authors like Ernest Hemingway, Zora Neale Hurston, James Joyce, Djuna Barnes, and others responded. The author contends that an examination of this moment may facilitate a better understanding of the relationship between media and authorship in our constantly shifting media landscape.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 208 • Trim: 6¼ x 9

978-1-4985-9344-1 • Hardback • November 2019 • $111.00 • (£85.00)

978-1-4985-9345-8 • eBook • November 2019 • $105.50 • (£82.00)

Subjects: Literary Criticism / Modern / 20th Century

Author

James Stamant is visiting assistant professor of English at Agnes Scott College.

Table of Contents

I. Introduction: Authorial Anxiety in a Mass Media World

II. Sherwood Anderson and the Truth that Lies Beneath

III. James Joyce and What is Hidden in the Dublin Newspaper

IV. F. Scott Fitzgerald and Collaborative Movie Writing

V. Ernest Hemingway and Unfulfilled Possibilities in the Movies

VI. Djuna Barnes, Sui Sin Far, Zora Neale Hurston, and Virginia Woolf: Concerns and Opportunities

VII. Conclusion: The Future of Storytelling

Competing Stories

Modernist Authors, Newspapers, and the Movies

James Stamant

Competing Stories

Modernist Authors, Newspapers, and the Movies

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