Unfinished Spirit

Muriel Rukeyser's Twentieth Century

Inbunden, Engelska, 2022

Av Rowena Kennedy-Epstein

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Winner of the Matei Calinescu PrizeIn Unfinished Spirit, Rowena Kennedy-Epstein brings to light the extraordinary archive of Muriel Rukeyser's (1913–1980) unpublished and incomplete literary works, revealing the ways in which misogyny influences the kinds of texts we read and value. Despite her status today as an influential poet, much of Rukeyser's critical and feminist writing remained unfinished, suppressed by the sexism of editors, political censure, the withdrawal of funding and publishing contracts, as well the conditions of single motherhood and economic precarity.From Savage Coast, her novel of the Spanish Civil War (which Kennedy-Epstein recovered, edited, and published to great acclaim in 2013) to her photo-text collaboration with Berenice Abbott, essays on women writers, radio scripts, and biographies, Unfinished Spirit traces the creation, reception, and rejection of Rukeyser's most ambitious texts—works that continued the radical, avant-garde project of modernism and challenged an increasingly hegemonic Cold War culture. Bound together by Rukeyser's radical vision of artistic creation and political engagement, these incomplete texts open a space to theorize the politics of the unfinished for understanding women's artistic production, reasserting the importance of the archive as a primary site of feminist criticism.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2022-03-15
Mått152 x 229 x 20 mm
Vikt907 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor277
FörlagCornell University Press
ISBN9781501762321
UtmärkelserWinner of Matei Calinescu Prize 2023 (United States)

Tillhör följande kategorier

Litteraturvetenskap inom Skonlitteratur
Genusvetenskap inom Samhalle och politik

Introduction: Waste/Archives/FeminismPart I: Novel Proliferations: The Spanish Civil War, 1936–19741. Costa Brava2. Her Symbol Was Civil War: Recovering Savage Coast3. Mother of Exiles: Spanish Civil War WritingPart II: Being Process Itself: Feminism, Collaboration, and Influence4. Bad Influence and Willful Subjects: The Life of Poetry, "Many Keys," and Sunday at Nine5. So Easy to See: The Unfinished Collaboration with Berenice Abbott6. Pillars of Process: Franz Boas, Birth, and Indigenous ThoughtConclusion: The Rukeyser Era

Unfinished Spirit is a bracing work of scholarly devotion. Alongside plenty of original readings and fresh interpretation, Kennedy-Epstein manages the uncanny trick of presenting us with Rukeyser at work, thinking and feeling her way through the catastrophes of her epoch. The reader comes away from the book enlivened and encouraged and enraged.(Women: A Cultural Review) Adventurous, painstaking, and thought-provoking, Unfinished Spirit will draw students of Rukeyser and twentieth-century American culture to think outside familiar literary historical boxes.(Modern Philology) Rukeyser's intervention in modernism with this avant-garde novel—and the obstruction of her career by misogynist expectations for women writers—are increasingly the focus of scholars eager to work on something new about the modernist novel and/or the Spanish Civil War.(Feminist Modernist Studies) A work of bold originality and personal, passionate scholarship Rukeyser's archival writing provides an invaluable perspective on our times and a guide to moving forward (particularly in our era of revived book banning) with her characteristic belief in possibility, in process and potential.(The Muriel Rukeyser Living Archive) The importance of Kennedy-Epstein's archival research and recovery of Rukeyser's unpublished and unfinished work cannot be overstated. Unfinished Spirit will be essential to the study of Rukeyser and to left women's writing going forward.(Against the Current) What Rukeyser did for others—speaking on their behalf, calling their work and their lives to the surface of consciousness—the editors seek to do for her. In The Muriel Rukeyser Era, they revive Rukeyser, and with her, offer a reminder of her times.(Textual Cultures)