Feyerabend, Britta
Seems Like Old Times

Postmodern Nostalgia in Woody Allen's Work.

Woody Allen's oeuvre, which spans five decades, has always been marked by a postmodern play with conventions, experimental techniques, and explorations of the status quo of modern urban lives. Yet, Woody Allen is also a nostalgic who makes the history of his nation, his people, and his individual subjects the constant theme of his work. Contrary to the assumption that postmodernity is necessarily linked to the future only and negates all history, this study argues that postmodern subjects very much depend on an active evaulation of the past and that, through the lens of history, present crises and traumata can be overcome. In this way, nostalgia manages to bring history back into postmodernism. IX,288 Seiten, gebunden (American Studies - A Monograph Series; Vol. 157/Universitätsverlag Winter 2009)