Bookshelf

| browse books |
books
 

| book details |

Auden and Documentary in the 1930s

By (author) Marsha Bryant





This book is currently unavailable. Enquire to check if we can source a used copy


| book description |

W.H. Auden established his literary reputation in a decade framed by economic depression and global war. He emerged as the defining literary voice of the 1930s while the doumentary genre emerged as the decade's principal discourse of social reality. In """"Auden and Documentary in the 1930s"""", Marsha Bryant examines this cultural convergence to challenge standard assumptions about socially engaged art. Restoring to Auden's canon the commentaries he wrote for documentary films and the photographs he published in his documentary travelogues, she considers the decade's interplay of visual and literary texts. Auden's first-hand experience with the British documentary film movement, along with his position as a gay man, prompted him to interrogate the politics of documentary representation. His work with the GPO Film Unit reveals ways in which the act of men filming men can blur boundaries of class and homerotic voyeurism. In """"Letters from Iceland"""" Auden juxtaposes poetry, prose and photographs, using modernist collage to question documentary ideas of order. The famous poem """"Spain"""" challenges the artist's role as observer by rejecting journalistic techniques such as interviews and reportage and obscuring distinctions between civilian and soldier, reader and text. In """"Journey to a War"""", another collaboration between photographs and words, Auden and Christopher Isherwood use their position as gay Englishmen in China to expose the heterosexism and imperialism inherent in traditional British documentary discourse. The 1930s continue to provide our dominant models of socially engaged art, especially through the documentary genre. In Auden's alternative documentary texts, Bryant reveals, the 1930s can also suggest new models of representation. This multilayered study should appeal to scholars of film studies, modernism, cultural studies and gay studies, as well as to Auden's legions of fans.

| product details |



Normally shipped | Enquiries only
Publisher | University of Virginia Press
Published date | 31 Dec 1997
Language |
Format | Hardback
Pages | 208
Dimensions | 234 x 157 x 20mm (L x W x H)
Weight | 550g
ISBN | 978-0-8139-1756-6
Readership Age |
BISAC |


| other options |


| your trolley |

To view the items in your trolley please sign in.

| sign in |

| specials |

Exiles: Times book of the month 'Stanley Kubrick meets MR James'

Mason Coile
Paperback / softback
224 pages
was: R 520.95
now: R 468.95
Forthcoming

A terrifying locked-room mystery set in a remote outpost on Mars.

Broken Country: AMAZON'S BOOK OF THE YEAR - THE MILLION-COPY BESTSELLER

Clare Leslie Hall
Paperback / softback
320 pages
was: R 395.95
now: R 355.95
Usually dispatched in 6-12 days

An epic love story with the pulse of a thriller that asks: what would you risk for a second chance at first love?

The Correspondent

Virginia Evans
Hardback
288 pages
was: R 552.95
now: R 525.95
Available from overseas. Usually dispatched in 14 days


Theory & Practice

Michelle de Kretser
Hardback
192 pages
was: R 415.95
now: R 373.95
Available from overseas. Dispatched in aprox 4-8 weeks as local supplier is out of stock