The Tyranny of Words in the Economy of Abundance: Modernism, Language, and Politics in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
TL;DRAbstract
To some observers in the late 1930s, the problems faced by the sharecroppers of the South were as much symptoms of a general linguistic failure and breakdown as they were illustrative of political and social inertia. Indeed, the two were closely connected. In 1929 the modernist Eugene Jolas noted the connection between social collapse and linguistic inertia when he stated, "[t]he Art of expression is suffering from a paralysis that is one of the symptoms of a civilization in collapse."1 As this chapter shows, James Agee's fraught attempts to dissect, understand, and revive the power of language in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men paralleled a popular exploration of linguistic structures and the political role of language in the New Deal era. With the rise of fascism in Europe, language and the control over meaning and language became a matter of heightened interest to writers and politicians and led to an accumulating interest in the relationship between semantics and politics over the per
Chat with Paper
AI Agents for this Paper
To some observers in the late 1930s, the problems faced by the sharecroppers of the South were as much symptoms of a general linguistic failure and breakdown as they were illustrative of political and social inertia. Indeed, the two were closely connected. In 1929 the modernist Eugene Jolas noted the connection between social collapse and linguistic inertia when he stated, "[t]he Art of expression is suffering from a paralysis that is one of the symptoms of a civilization in collapse."1 As this chapter shows, James Agee's fraught attempts to dissect, understand, and revive the power of language in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men paralleled a popular exploration of linguistic structures and the political role of language in the New Deal era. With the rise of fascism in Europe, language and the control over meaning and language became a matter of heightened interest to writers and politicians and led to an accumulating interest in the relationship between semantics and politics over the per
Keywords
Chat
Click to start Chat