Off-canon Pleasures
Armin Paul Frank
Literature & Fiction
Off-canon Pleasures
Free
Description
Contents
Reviews

The inclusion of works in a canonical list creates a large body of exclusions. But among these neglected works there are not a few that nevertheless are worth reading. Literary worth is not necessarily aesthetic impeccability. A literary work recommends itself by a high degree of artistic achievement with elbowroom for historical importance. The present study focuses on Leo Rosten´s immigration novel The Education of Hyman Kaplan (1937) and Archibald MacLeish´s radio play Air Raid (1938). The first is more than the apparent compendium of language-based jokes. Read in the context of immigration policy from Presidents Theodore Roosevelt to F. D. Roosevelt and of Jewish-American humor, it displays Kaplan´s moral and intellectual growth, which extant commentary denies, and exhibits the "interior internationality" of an immigration country. Air Raid is one of the few achieved American radio plays to take a stand on foreign affairs in a context that does not only consist of broadcasting and Picasso´s collage-painting Guernica "the screaming picture" which MacLeish transposed into the acoustic medium but also of the historical saturation bombing of the Basque town.

Language
English
ISBN
978-3-941875-95-1
Preface
Contents
1 Introduction
1 Internationality, external and internal
2 Leo Rosten and Archibald Macleish
3 The critical standing of Rosten and MacLeish
4 Summary
2 Leo Rosten and the Matter of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N
1 The “new immigrants” and Americanization
2 Jews in twentieth-century American humor
3 Narrating a Night School for Adults
4 The opening situation
5 The wide world of The Education of Hyman Kaplan, the wider world of O Kaplan! My Kaplan!
6 Language humor and beyond
7 An international problem in beginners’ grade
8 Mr. Kaplan’s education
9 Summary
3 Archibald MacLeish and the Theme of Imminent War
1 Context of politics, poetics, and radio
2 Doctrines of air war
3 Pablo Picasso’s Guernica
4 Old style war and new in Air Raid
5 The radio art of Air Raid
6 Summary
4 Perspective
1 Ten more works of low visibility
2 Invitation
Appendices
Appendix I – A Brief Propositional Examination of the Canon
Appendix II – Reporting Guernica – Questions of Knowing
1 An air raid and its repercussions
2 A war correspondent’s ways of knowing
3 George L. Steer: Launching the story of Guernica
4 “Historic Basque Town Wiped Out” as news story
5 George L. Steer: Revising the story of Guernica
6 Later accounts
7 Conclusions
References
Literature Consulted
Backcover
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