The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Literature and Politics

384 Pages·2022·2.973 MB·English

by  Christos Hadjiyiannis, Rachel Potter

THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO
TWENTIETH-CENTURY LITERATURE AND
POLITICS
For a long time, people had been schooled to think of modern
literature’s relationship to politics as indirect or obscure, and often
to find the politics of literature deep within its unconsciously ideo
logical structures and forms. But twentieth century writers were
directly involved in political parties and causes, and many viewed
theirwritingaspartoftheiractivism.ThisCompaniontellsastoryof
the rich and diverse ways in which literature and politics over the
twentiethcenturycoincided,overlapped andalsoclashed.Covering
someofthecentury’smostinfluentialpoliticalideas,moments,and
movements,nineteenacademicexpertsuncovernewwaysofthinking
about the relationship between literature and politics. Liberalism,
Communism, fascism, suffragism, pacifism, federalism, different
nationalisms, civil rights, women’s rights, sexual rights, Indigenous
rights, environmentalism, neoliberalism: twentieth century authors
wrote in direct response to political movements, ideas, events, and
campaigns.
christos hadjiyiannis haswrittenwidelyonmodernliterature
andart,includingontheavant garde,fascistliterature/politics,Julia
Kristeva, Djuna Barnes, and the afterlives of Byzantium in modern
British and North American literature. He is the author of
Conservative Modernists: Literature and Tory Politics in Britain,
1900 1920(CambridgeUniversityPress,2018).
rachel potter writes on modernist literature and culture. Her
work has focused on literature, censorship, free expression, and
writers’ organisations. Her books include Obscene Modernism:
Literary Censorship and Experiment, 1900 1940 (Oxford University
Press, 2013); The Edinburgh Guide to Modernist Literature
(EdinburghUniversityPress,2012);andModernismandDemocracy:
LiteraryCulture,1900 1930(OxfordUniversityPress,2006).
Published online by Cambridge University Press
Published online by Cambridge University Press
THE CAMBRIDGE
COMPANION TO
TWENTIETH-CENTURY
LITERATURE AND POLITICS
edited by
CHRISTOS HADJIYIANNIS
UniversityofCyprus
RACHEL POTTER
UniversityofEastAnglia
Published online by Cambridge University Press
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Published online by Cambridge University Press
Contents
ListofFigures pagevii
NotesontheContributors viii
Acknowledgements xiv
Chronology xv
Introduction:LiteratureandPolitics 1
ChristosHadjiyiannisandRachelPotter
part i 1900–1945: ideas and governance 17
1 Liberalism 19
ChristosHadjiyiannis
2 Communism 36
MatthewTaunton
3 Fascism 54
CharlesFerrallandDougalMcNeill
4 Suffragism 71
ClaraJones
5 Pacifism 87
BárbaraGallegoLarrarte
part ii 1945–1989: new nations and new frontiers 103
6 Partitions 105
AnindyaRaychaudhuri
7 Federalism 120
RyanWeberling
v
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vi Contents
8 ColdWar 134
RachelPotter
9 IrishNationalism 150
EmerNolan
10 BlackNationalism 165
GerShunAvilez
11 CaribbeanNationalisms 180
AlisonDonnell
12 AfricanNationalisms 195
DonnaV.Jones
13 Apartheid 212
CorinneSandwith
part iii 1989–2000: rights and activisms 227
14 Women’sRights 229
RacheleDini
15 SexualRights 251
JoWinning
16 IndigenousRights 270
ChristinaTurner
17 EnvironmentalRights 290
JosSmith
18 Neoliberalism 307
PeterBoxall
FurtherReading 323
Index 333
Published online by Cambridge University Press
Figures
12.1 YinkaShonibare,‘TheScrambleforAfrica’(2003) page197
©YinkaShonibareCBE.AllRightsReserved,DACS/
Artimage2021.ImagecourtesyStephenFriedman
Gallery,LondonandJamesCohanGallery,NewYork.
CommissionedbytheMuseumforAfricanArt,Long
IslandCity,NY.
14.1 BendixadvertisementfortheTumblerAgitator 231
Washer,SaturdayEveningPost,22September1956.
14.2 KelvinatoradvertisementfortheFoodarama 233
refrigerator,SaturdayEveningPost,1961.
14.3 MarthaRosler,‘RedStripeKitchen’,fromHouse 243
Beautiful:BringingtheWarHome(1967–72).
14.4 MarthaRosler,‘CleaningtheDrapes’,fromHouse 244
Beautiful:BringingtheWarHome(1967–72).
vii
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Notes on the Contributors
gershun avilez is Professor of English and Director of Graduate
Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is a cultural
studies scholar specialising in contemporary African American and
BlackDiasporicliteraturesandvisualcultures.Muchofhisscholarship
explores genderand sexuality inartistic production.He has published
twobooks:RadicalAestheticsandModernBlackNationalism(University
of Illinois Press, 2016) and Black Queer Freedom: Spaces of Injury and
PathsofDesire(UniversityofIllinoisPress,2020).Hehaswrittenessays
onarangeofhistoricalandculturalsubjects,includingtheColdWar,
segregationnarratives,earlyAfricanAmericanwriting,raceandterror,
social death, queer life, experimental poetry, Black women’s writing,
the Harlem Renaissance, Black Power gender politics, and the Black
ArtsMovement.
peter boxall isProfessorofEnglishattheUniversityofSussex.Hehas
written books on Samuel Beckett, on Don DeLillo, and several books
on the novel, including Twenty-First-Century Fiction (Cambridge
University Press, 2013) and The Value of the Novel (Cambridge
University Press, 2015). His most recent book is The Prosthetic
Imagination: A History of the Novel as Artificial Life (Cambridge
UniversityPress,2020).Hehaseditedawiderangeofwork,including
a collection on Samuel Beckett’s politics entitled Beckett/Aesthetics/
Politics; a collection on poetry entitled Thinking Poetry (with Peter
Nicholls); 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die; The Cambridge
Companion to British Fiction, 1980–2018; and a Faber edition of
Beckett’s novel, Malone Dies. He is also co-editor of volume 7 of The
OxfordHistoryoftheNovelinEnglish(withBryanCheyette),editorof
thebookseries‘CambridgeStudiesinTwenty-First-CenturyLiterature
and Culture’, and editor of the UK journal Textual Practice. He is
viii
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NotesontheContributors ix
currently writing a book about the twentieth-century novel and the
currentcrisesinWesternculture,entitledFictionsoftheWest.
rachele dini isSeniorLecturerinEnglishandAmericanLiteratureat
the University of Roehampton, where she works on post-1945 US
literatureandculture.SheistheauthorofConsumerism,Waste,andRe-
UseinTwentieth-CenturyFiction:LegaciesoftheAvant-Garde(Palgrave
Macmillan, 2016) and ‘All-Electric’ Narratives: Time-Saving Appliances
andDomesticityinAmericanLiterature,1945–2020(Bloomsbury,2021),
andtheeditorofQueerTrashandFeministExcretions:NewDirectionsin
LiteraryandCulturalWasteStudies(SUNYPress,2022).Sheisalsothe
founder of the International Literary Waste Studies Network. Her
currentprojectsincludeastudyofthepoliticsofpostmillennialnostal-
gia for mid-century interior design, and a British Academy and
Leverhulme funded study, ‘Cleaning Through Crisis: Political
Upheaval and the Advertising of Domestic Hygiene, 1963–2023’,
aboutthepoliticsofdomesticcleaningproductads.
alison donnell is Professor of Modern Literatures in English and
HeadoftheSchoolofLiterature,Drama,andCreativeWritingatthe
University of East Anglia. She has published widely on Caribbean,
diasporic, and Black British writings, focusing specifically on challen-
gingorthodoxliteraryhistoriesandonrecoveringwomen’svoices.She
is the General Editor of the three-volume publication Caribbean
Literature in Transition, 1800–2015 (Cambridge University Press,
2020). Her latest book, Creolized Sexualities: Undoing
Heteronormativity in the Literary Imagination of the Anglo-Caribbean,
appeared in the Critical Caribbean Studies series (Rutgers University
Press,2021).Sheisalsoleadingamajorresearchprojectfundedbythe
Leverhulme Trust: ‘Caribbean Literary Heritage: Recovering the Lost
Past and Safeguarding the Future’ (www.caribbeanliteraryheritage
.com).
charles ferrall isAssociateProfessorintheSchoolofEnglish,Film,
Theatre,MediaStudies,andArtHistoryatTeHerengaWakaVictoria
UniversityofWellington,NewZealand.HeistheauthorofModernist
Writing and Reactionary Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2001)
and, with Dougal McNeill, of Writing the 1926 General Strike:
Literature, Culture, Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2015), and
editor of British Literature in Transition, 1920–1940 (Cambridge
UniversityPress,2018).
Published online by Cambridge University Press
x NotesontheContributors
christos hadjiyiannis isResearchFellowattheCentreforMedieval
Arts&RitualsattheUniversityofCyprusandVisitingResearchFellow
at the Institute of English Studies in London. He is the author of
Conservative Modernists: Literature and Tory Politics in Britain, 1900–
1920 (Cambridge University Press, 2018). He has published widely on
modernistartandliterature.Hiscurrentproject,hostedbytheCentre
for Medieval Arts & Rituals at the University of Cyprus, explores the
afterlivesofByzantiuminAnglophonemodernism.
clara jones isaSeniorLecturerinModernLiteratureatKing’sCollege
London. She is the author of Virginia Woolf: Ambivalent
Activist (Edinburgh University Press, 2016), a book which explores
Woolf’s involvement with organisations including the People’s
Suffrage Federation and the Women’s Co-operative Guild. Her new
project focuses on the politicsof interwar women writers and activists
such as Sylvia Townsend Warner, Amabel Williams-Ellis, and Ellen
Wilkinson.
donna v. jones isanAssociateProfessorintheDepartmentofEnglish
attheUniversityofCalifornia,Berkeley.SheistheauthorofTheRacial
Discourses of Life Philosophy: Négritude, Vitalism, and
Modernity(ColumbiaUniversityPress,2010).
ba´rbara gallego larrarte is a Postdoctoral Visiting Research
Fellow at the Institute of English Studies, University of London. Her
researchinterestsfallbroadlywithintheinterwarperiod,withaspecial
focusontheideologicalimpactoftheSpanishCivilWar.In2019,she
completedaPhDatWolfsonCollege,Oxford,onT.S.Eliot,Virginia
Woolf,E.M.Forster,andtheirnetworks.Sheiscurrentlyworkingon
a monograph about intergenerational dynamics in the 1930s based on
thisdoctoralwork.
dougal mcneill is Senior Lecturer in the School of English, Film,
Theatre, Media Studies, and Art History, Te Herenga Waka Victoria
University of Wellington. He is the author, with Charles Ferrall, of
Writingthe1926GeneralStrike:Literature,Culture,Politics(Cambridge
UniversityPress,2015).
emer nolan is Professor of English at Maynooth University, Ireland.
She is author of works on Irish literature and culture,
including James Joyce and Nationalism (Routledge, 1995); Catholic
Emancipations: Irish Fiction from Thomas Moore to James Joyce
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