{"product_id":"modern-epic","title":"Modern Epic","description":"\"Take \u003ci\u003eFaust\u003c\/i\u003e, what is it? A 'tragedy', as its author states? A great philosophical tale? A collection of lyrical insights? Who can say. How about \u003ci\u003eMoby-Dick\u003c\/i\u003e? Encyclopedia, novel or romance? Or even a 'singular medley, ' as one anonymous 1851 review put it? ... 'It is no longer a novel, ' T.S. Eliot said of \u003ci\u003eUlysses\u003c\/i\u003e. But if not novels, then what are they?\" \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eLiterary history has long been puzzled by how to classify and treat these aesthetic monuments. In this highly original and interdisciplinary work, Franco Moretti builds a theory of the modern epic: a sort of super-genre that has provided many of the \"sacred texts\" of Western literary culture. He provides a taxonomy capable of accommodating \u003ci\u003eFaust\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eMoby-Dick, The Nibelung's Ring, Ulysses, The Cantos, The Waste Land, The Man Without Qualities \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eOne Hundred Years of Solitude\u003c\/i\u003e. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eFor Moretti the significance of the modern epic reaches well beyond the aesthetic sphere: it is the form that represents the European domination of the planet, and establishes a solid consent around it. Political ambition and formal inventiveness are here continuously entwined, as the representation of the world system stimulates the technical breakthroughs of polyphony, reverie and leitmotif; of the stream of consciousness, collage and complexity. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eOpening with an analysis of Goethe's \u003ci\u003eFaust\u003c\/i\u003e and the different historical roles of epic and the novel, Moretti moves through a discussion of Wagner's \u003ci\u003eRing\u003c\/i\u003e and on to a sociology of modernist technique. He ends with a fascinating interpretation of \"magic realism\" as a compromise formation between a number of modernist devices and the return of narrative interest, and suggests that the west's enthusiastic reception of these texts (and \u003ci\u003eOne Hundred Years of Solitude\u003c\/i\u003e in particular) constitutes a ritual self-absolution for centuries of colonialism.","brand":"Verso","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50021740118266,"sku":"9781859840696","price":29.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0840\/1253\/1962\/files\/imageloader_a924b9e6-4b83-488c-bc2d-46c74cd83402.jpg?v=1786139166","url":"https:\/\/mindsourcebooks.com\/products\/modern-epic","provider":"Mind Source Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}