Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-jr42d Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-19T22:58:33.241Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Pynchon's Postmodern Sublime

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Marc W. Redfield
Marc W. Redfield*
Affiliation:
University of Geneva Geneva, Switzerland
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Theoretical accounts of the “postmodern” have recently invoked the aesthetic category of the sublime, but without attending to the rhetorical complexities that the category names and conceals. This essay opens by considering disturbances legible in Fredric Jameson's proposal of a postmodern sublime, then goes on to consider narratives by Thomas Pynchon that interrogate and allegorize the burdens of such a proposition. From the early short stories to V. and Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon's texts develop increasingly complex stagings of the sublime, putting into question the psychological and epistemological consolations that these scenarios exist to afford.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 104 , Issue 2 , March 1989 , pp. 152 - 162
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1989

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Blanchot, Maurice. L'amitié. Paris: Gallimard, 1971.Google Scholar
Cowart, David. Thomas Pynchon: The Art of Allusion. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1980.Google Scholar
de Man, Paul. “Phenomenality and Materiality in Kant.” Hermeneutics: Questions and Prospects. Ed. Shapiro, Gary and Sica, Alan. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1984. 121–44.Google Scholar
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Experience.” Essays: Second Series. Vol. 3 of The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ed. Ferguson, Alfred R. and Carr, Jean Ferguson. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1983. 25–49.Google Scholar
Ferguson, Frances. “The Nuclear Sublime.” Diacritics 14.2 (1984): 4–10.10.2307/464754CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedman, Alan J. “Science and Technology.” Approaches to Gravity's Rainbow. Ed. Clerc, Charles. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1983. 69–102.Google ScholarPubMed
Hertz, Neil. The End of the Line: Essays on Psychoanalysis and the Sublime. New York: Columbia UP, 1985.Google Scholar
Hutcheon, Linda. Narcissistic Narrative: The Metafictional Paradox. 1980. New York: Methuen, 1984.Google Scholar
Jameson, Fredric. “Postmodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.” New Left Review 146 (1984): 53–92.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Judgment. Trans. Bernard, J. H. New York: Hafner, 1951.Google Scholar
Kristeva, Julia. “L'abjet d'amour.” Tel quel 91 (1982): 17–32.Google Scholar
Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Trans. Roudiez, Leon S. New York: Columbia UP, 1982.Google Scholar
Lyotard, J.-F. “Answering the Question: What Is Postmodernism?” Trans. Durand, Régis. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Trans. Bennington, Geoff and Massumi, Brian. Foreword by Fredric Jameson. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1984. 71–82.Google Scholar
Monk, Samuel. The Sublime: A Study of Critical Theories in Eighteenth-Century England. 1935. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1960.Google Scholar
Pynchon, Thomas. Gravity's Rainbow. New York: Viking, 1973.Google Scholar
Pynchon, Thomas. Slow Learner: Early Stories. London: Cape, 1985.Google Scholar
Pynchon, Thomas. V. 1963. New York: Bantam, 1981.Google Scholar
Schaub, Thomas. Pynchon: The Voice of Ambiguity. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1981.Google Scholar
Schwenger, Peter. “Writing the Unthinkable.” Critical Inquiry 13 (1986): 33–48.10.1086/448371CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shelley, Percy B. “A Defense of Poetry.” Shelley's Poetry and Prose. Ed. Reiman, Donald H. and Powers, Sharon B. Norton Critical Edition. New York: Norton, 1977. 480–508.Google Scholar
Slade, Joseph. Thomas Pynchon. New York: Warner, 1974.Google Scholar
Stimpson, Catharine R. “Pre-apocalyptic Atavism: Thomas Pynchon's Early Fiction.” Mindful Pleasures: Essays on Thomas Pynchon. Ed. Levine, George and Leverenz, David. New York: Little, 1976. 31–47.Google Scholar
Tanner, Tony. City of Words: American Fiction, 1950–1970. London: Cape, 1971.Google Scholar
Weiskel, Thomas. The Romantic Sublime: Studies in the Structure and Psychology of Transcendence. 1976. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1986.Google Scholar
Wordsworth, William. The Prelude, 1799, 1805, 1850. Ed. Wordsworth, Jonathan, Abrams, M. H., and Gill, Stephen. Norton Critical Edition. New York: Norton, 1979.Google Scholar