Date of Submission
Spring 2014
Academic Programs and Concentrations
Literature
Project Advisor 1
Nathan Shockey
Abstract/Artist's Statement
This project examines the literary and political content of Encounter magazine, a monthly periodical based in London that published its first issue in October of 1953. However, as the public discovered in 1967, Encounter had been covertly funded by the Central Intelligence Agency as part of a clandestine operation to convince European and American intellectuals of the evils of political neutralism and, hopefully, win them over to the side of anti-Communism. Encounter has primarily been viewed and studied by scholars as a piece of Western propaganda, and much attention has been paid to the significance of its overtly political content. This project addresses these political and ideological issues, but focuses on introducing a discussion of the magazine's status as a literary entity into the critical discourse on the subject. By treating the magazine's contents as literary text, it becomes evident that the editors of the publication were intent on promoting a model of socially engaged authorship in which the writer was encouraged to address cultural, political, and social issues through their work.
Open Access Agreement
On-Campus only
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Corner, Joshua Parkin, "Dismantling the Literary Fallout Shelter: Encounter Magazine and the Creative Ethos of the Cold War Writer" (2014). Senior Projects Spring 2014. 182.
https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2014/182
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