Silent Film and the Formations of U.S. Literary Culture: Literature in Motion

Silent Film and the Formations of U.S. Literary Culture: Literature in Motion argues that the emergence of motion pictures constituted a defining moment in U.S. literary history. Author Sarah Gleeson-White discovers what happened to literary culture-both popular and higher-brow--when inserted into the spectacular world of motion pictures during the early decades of the twentieth century. How did literary culture respond to, and how was it altered by, the development of motion pictures, literature’s exemplar and rival in narrative realism and enthrallment? Gleeson-White draws on extensive archival film and literary materials, and unearths a range of collaborative, cross-media expressive and industrial practices to reveal the manifold ways in which early-twentieth-century literary culture sought both to harness and temper the reach of motion pictures.

Sarah Gleeson-White is Associate Professor of English at the University of Sydney. She has published widely on early twentieth-century U.S. literature and film in PMLA, Modernism/modernity, and African American Review, among others. Her books include William Faulkner at Twentieth Century-Fox: The Annotated Screenplays, Strange Bodies: Gender and Identity in the Novels of Carson McCullers, and The New William Faulkner Studies.