Corridor offers a series of conceptually provocative readings that illuminate a hidden and surprising relationship between architectural space and modern American fiction. By paying close attention to fictional descriptions of some of modernity’s least remarkable structures, such as plumbing, ductwork, and airshafts, Kate Marshall discovers a rich network of connections between corridors and novels, one that also sheds new light on the nature of modern media.The corridor is the dominant organizational structure in modern architecture, yet its various functions are taken for granted, and it tends to disappear from view. But, as Marshall shows, even the most banal structures become strangely visible in the noisy communication systems of American fiction. By examining the link between modernist novels and corridors, Marshall demonstrates the ways architectural elements act as media. In a fresh look at the late naturalist fiction of the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s, she leads the reader through the fetus-clogged sewers of Manhattan Transfer to the corpse-choked furnaces of Native Son and reveals how these invisible spaces have a fascinating history in organizing the structure of modern persons. Portraying media as not only objects but processes, Marshall develops a new idiom for Americanist literary criticism, one that explains how media studies can inform our understanding of modernist literature.
Les mer
ContentsPreface: “All That I Need Is a Hallway”AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Corridoricity1. Becoming Media in An American Tragedy2. Infrastructural Modernity3. The Flu and the Media, or Contagion 19184. Corridors of PowerEpilogue: Open PlanNotesBibliographyIndex
Les mer
Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780816679287
Publisert
2013-06-14
Utgiver
Vendor
University of Minnesota Press
Høyde
216 mm
Bredde
140 mm
Dybde
38 mm
Aldersnivå
01, G, 01
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Antall sider
256
Forfatter
Om bidragsyterne
Kate Marshall is Thomas J. and Robert T. Rolfs Assistant Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame.