Practices of Surprise in American Literature After Emerson locates
a paradoxical question - how does one prepare to be surprised? - at
the heart of several major modernist texts. Arguing that this
paradox of perception gives rise to an American literary
methodology, this book dramatically reframes how practices of
reading and writing evolved among modernist authors after Emerson.
Whereas Walter Benjamin defines modernity as a 'series of shocks'
inflicted from without, Emerson offers a countervailing optic that
regards life as a 'series of surprises' unfolding from within.
While Benjaminian shock elicits intimidation and defensiveness,
Emersonian surprise fosters states of responsiveness and
spontaneity whereby unexpected encounters become generative rather
than enervating. As a study of how such states of responsiveness
were cultivated by a post-Emerson tradition of writers and
thinkers, this project displaces longstanding models of modernist
perception defined by shock's passive duress, and proposes
alternate models of reception that proceed from the active practice
of surprise.
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