The Ancients and the Postmoderns

Fredric Jameson sweeps from the Renaissance to The Wire

High modernism is now as far from us as antiquity was for the Renaissance. Such is the premise of Fredric Jameson’s major new work in which modernist works, this time in painting (Rubens) and music (Wagner and Mahler), are pitted against late-modernist ones (in film) as well as a variety of postmodern experiments (from SF to The Wire, from “Eurotrash” in opera to Altman and East German literature): all of which attempt, in their different ways, to invent new forms to grasp a specific social totality. Throughout the historical periods, argues Jameson, the question of narrative persists through its multiple formal changes and metamorphoses.Praise for A Singular Modernity:

“Fredric Jameson is America’s leading Marxist critic. A prodigiously energetic thinker whose writings sweep majestically from Sophocles to science fiction.” —Terry Eagleton

Praise for Postmodernism:

“For anybody hoping to understand not just the cultural but the political and social implications of postmodernism … Jameson’s book is a fundamental, nonpareil text.” —Sunday Times

“The scope and profundity of Postmodernism, covering theory, architecture, film, video and economics, is truly staggering … Brilliant.” —IndependentFredric Jameson is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature at Duke University. The author of numerous books, he has over the last three decades developed a richly nuanced vision of Western culture’s relation to political economy. He was a recipient of the 2008 Holberg International Memorial Prize. He is the author of many books, including Postmodernism, Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism; The Cultural Turn; A Singular Modernity; The Modernist Papers; Archaeologies of the Future; Brecht and Method; Ideologies of Theory; Valences of the Dialectic; The Hegel Variations; and Representing Capital.