Oragean Modernism: A lost literary movement, 1924-1953 - Softcover

Woodson, Jon

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1491096810 ISBN 13: 9781491096819

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013

Synopsis

Jon Woodson’s Oragean Modernism: a lost literary movement, 1924-1953 (2013) is the sequel to his path-breaking intervention in Harlem Renaissance studies, To Make a New Race: Gurdjieff, Toomer, and the Harlem Renaissance (1999). Beginning with A Critical Analysis of the Poetry of Melvin B. Tolson (1979), Woodson has investigated complex modernist texts by African American writers, searching for the key to their contradictions, enigmas, and spellbinding literary mastery. Widening the scope of his inquiry to include Lost Generation authors, Woodson has revealed an unprecedented conspiracy of writers, editors, publishers, artists, intellectuals, and technocrats —all united in a secret plan to change the course of world history in order to circumvent a global disaster. Fortified by belief in their superhumanity, the Oragean Modernists were convinced that only they could redirect the fate of the Earth. Writing with dynamic intensity, they produced a vast body of esoteric literature to disseminate their message to their contemporaries, and to future generations—should they fail. Comprising many popular and canonical literary works, the Oragean Modernist writings are nevertheless some of the most controversial and difficult literary works of the 1920s and 1930s. For the first time, Woodson’s iconoclastic study places these works in a context that gathers them into a narrative that is daring, sweeping, and intellectually electrifying.

About this title

About the Author:

Jon Woodson is a Howard University emeritus professor of English, Fulbright lecturer in American Literature, novelist, and poet. He is the author of Anthems, Sonnets, and Chants: Recovering the African American Poetry of the 1930s, OSUP, 2011; To Make a New Race: Gurdjieff, Toomer, and the Harlem. Renaissance, UP of Mississippi, 1999; and A Study of Joseph Heller's Catch-22: Going Around Twice, Lang, 2001.

About this edition

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1491096810
• ISBN 13: 9781491096819
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 212