A History of Modernist Literature

621 Pages·2015·2.065 MB·English

by  Andrzej Gasiorek

A History of Modernist Literature
BLACKWELL HISTORIES OF LITERATURE
General editor: Peter Brown, University of Kent, Canterbury
The books in this series renew and redefine a familiar form by recognizing
that to write literary history involves more than placing texts in chrono-
logical sequence. Thus, the emphasis within each volume falls both on
plotting the significant literary developments of a given period, and on the
wider cultural contexts within which they occurred. ‘Cultural history’ is
construed in broad terms, and authors address such issues as politics,
society, the arts, ideologies, varieties of literary production and consump-
tion, and dominant genres and modes. The effect of each volume is to give
the reader a sense of possessing a crucial sector of literary terrain, of
understanding the forces that give a period its distinctive cast, and of see-
ing how writing of a given period impacts on, and is shaped by, its cultural
circumstances.
Published to date
Seventeenth‐Century English Literature Thomas N. Corns
Victorian Literature James Eli Adams
Old English Literature, Second Edition R. D. Fulk
and Christopher M. Cain
Modernist Literature Andrzej Gąsiorek
Forthcoming:
Eighteenth‐Century British Literature John Richetti
Romantic Literature Frederick Burwick
A HISTORy OF
MOdERnIST LITERATURE
Andrzej Gasiorek
̨
This edition first published 2015
© 2015 Andrzej Gąsiorek.
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Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data
Gasiorek, Andrzej, 1960–
A history of modernist literature / Andrzej Gasiorek. – First edition.
pages cm. – (Blackwell history of literature ; 7)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4051-7716-0 (hardback)
1. Modernism (Literature)–England. I. Title.
PR478.M6G38 2015
820.9′112–dc23
2014039727
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover image: Wyndham Lewis, Dancing Figures, 1914. Private collection. © The Wyndham
Lewis Memorial Trust / Bridgeman Images
Set in 10.5/13pt Galliard by SPi Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India
1 2015
‘I began at the beginning, like an old ballocks, can you imagine that?’
(Samuel Beckett)
‘He who represents the course of a human life, or a sequence of events
extending over a prolonged period of time, and represents it from
beginning to end, must prune and isolate arbitrarily’.
(Erich Auerbach)

Contents
Preface ix
Abbreviations xiv
Introduction: Locating Modernism 1
1 Early Modernism 44
The New Woman 44
Literary Impressionism 54
Debating Imperialism 70
Early Modernist Drama 91
Edward Gordon Craig and W. B. Yeats 100
The Modern Metropolis 107
Ford Madox Ford and The English Review 118
2 ‘One Big Bloodless Brawl’: Modernist Literature,
1910–1914 136
Introduction 136
Exploring the Machine Age 141
Poetry and the Renovation of Language 157
Imagism 166
Ford, Flint, and Eliot 176
Dubliners 184
Suffragettes, Feminists, and Egoists 189
Blast and Vorticism 203
3 Modernism During Wartime 231
Introduction 231
Pacifism, Nationalism, and Community 234
Propaganda and Ideology 250
viii Contents
The Good Soldier 271
Portraits of the Male Artist 278
The Politics of Gender 292
4 ‘ A Haughty and Proud Generation’:
Modernist Literature, 1918–1930 332
Introduction 332
The Backwashes of War 342
Ulysses 363
The Waste Land 381
Remaking the Novel 395
A Future for the Avant‐Garde? 412
5 Modernism in the 1930s 432
Introduction 432
Modernity and Its Discontents 444
The Situation of Poetry 469
Modernism, Race, and Colonialism 479
The Festival Theatre and Group Theatre 492
Surrealism 504
Pound/Joyce 522
6 Coda: Modernism’s Afterlives 554
Index 570