LITERARY DEATH AND CANON: SUPRAEXISTENTIALITY AND ANAESTHESIA IN AMERICAN LITERATURE

Abstract

The paper considers problems related to cannon making in American literature during the first half of the twentieth century. Subject to the analysis are the manipulative factors of cannon making, creating the idea of “literary death“ as oblivion and as a supraexistential presence. The theoretical references are to the ontotheological studies of Martin Heidegger. The literary death is studied as physical death of the character and also as the metaphysical death of the author with emphasis on the social dimensions of the catharsis. The work of Ellen Glasgow, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather is the springboard to which the literary circumstances and development are referred novelists Gertrude Stein, Djuna Barnes, Evelyn Scott, and the palette of themes predetermines an analysis of the specificity of realism (naturalism), regionalism and modernism in American literature.