Edge of Irony

Marjorie Perloff is professor of English emerita at Stanford University and the Florence R. Scott Professor of English Emerita at the University of Southern California. She is the author of many books, including, most recently, Poetics in a New Key and Unoriginal Genius, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

"Always on the cutting edge of whatever she investigates, Perloff throws light on the subtleties and contradictions--inner and outer--of the literary universe of Celan and Canetti, Kraus and Freud, Musil and Roth. She interweaves, as no one else could, the examination of Celan's poetry with his personal life. The majestic coda to her study, dealing with Wittgenstein's fascination with the Christian Gospels and his complicated involvement with his own traces of anti-Semitism, forms a particularly convincing refusal of closure, the enemy of the historical modernism she so brilliantly studies and espouses."--Mary Ann Caws, author of Surprised in Translation "This book takes us into the undiscovered country of Austro-Modernism in all of its historical complexity, and in the process requires us to address in new ways the questions of literary innovation, the sources of authorial identity, and how to read texts whose distinctive language and formal ingenuity confront us with the inadequacies of our received critical concepts and practices. Edge of Irony is without doubt the most impressive achievement of Perloff's distinguished career."--Gerald Bruns, University of Notre Dame "Edge of Irony is a beautifully written account of Austrian modernism. In this important contribution to European literary history, Perloff reveals the rich contexts and surprising contemporaneity of mid-twentieth-century Austrian literature."--Patrick Greaney, University of Colorado Boulder "Most critics have dealt with Austrian modernism--and modernism in general--from a prewar perspective. Perloff rightly sees the aftermath of the war, the breakup of empire, as informing the Austro-Modernists' boldest works. Edge of Irony presents a model for attuning literary study to the political complexities with which writings like these are eternally embroiled."--Thomas Harrison, University of California, Los Angeles