Modernism and Democracy Literary Culture 1900-1930

by Potter, Rachel

• ISBN13: 9780199273935
• ISBN10: 0199273936
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-09-21
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Anglo-American modernist writing and modern mass democratic states emerged at the same time, during the period of 1900-1930. Yet writers such as T. S. Eliot, W. B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, Wyndham Lewis, and Ford Madox Ford were notoriously hostile to modern democracies. They often defended, incontrast, anti-democratic forms of cultural authority. Since the late 1970s, however, our understanding of modernist culture has altered as previously marginalised writers, in particular women such as Gertrude Stein, Djuna Barnes, H.D., and Mina Loy, have been reassessed. Not only has the picture ofAnglo-American modernist culture changed significantly, but the understanding of the relationship between modernist writing and politics has also shifted.Rachel Potter here reassess the relationship between modernism and democracy by analysing the wide range of different reactions by modernist writers to the new democracies. She charts the changes in the ideas of democracy as a result of the shift from liberal to mass democracies after the FirstWorld War and of women's entrance into the political and cultural spheres. By uncovering hitherto-unanalysed essays by a number of feminist writers she argues that in fact there was a widespread scepticism about the consequences of mass democracy for women's liberation, and that this scepticism wascentral to the work of women modernist writers.

Author Biography

After completing her Ph.D. in English at Cambridge University in 1998, Rachel Potter was a lecturer in Modernist Literature at the University of Southampton before becoming a lecturer in Modernist Literature at Queen Mary, University of London.

Table of Contents

Introduction. Unacknowledged Legislators: Modernist Poetry and Democracy	1	(11)
Chapter 1. 'No artist can ever love democracy': Modernism and Democracy 1907-1914	12	(37)
Liberalism before the First World War	12	(7)
Ego Vogues: The Philosophical Attack on Democracy	19	(8)
The English Reception of Stirner and Nietzsche: 1907-1914	27	(5)
Feminist Egoists: 1907-1914	32	(17)
Chapter 2. Modernist Literature: Individualism and Authority	49	(38)
T.E. Hulme, Rousseau, and Democracy	54	(6)
Ezra Pound, Freedom of Expression, and Bourgeois Women: 1911-1915	60	(5)
'We make you a present of our votes. Only leave works of art alone': Futurism and Vorticism	65	(4)
Skewing Art and Sex: Tarr and the Critique of Mimesis	69	(3)
The War, Mass Democracy, and the Individual: 1917-1924	72	(5)
The Post-War Average: The New Democratic Standard	77	(5)
Women Egoists	82	(5)
Chapter 3. H.D.: Egoist Modernism	87	(43)
H.D., the New Freewoman, and Egoism	90	(5)
Romantic or Classic?: H.D.'s Early Poems	95	(3)
'Some outer horror': The Language of Poetry	98	(7)
'Unacknowledged Legislators': Modernist Poets	105	(2)
Men and Women: H.D. on Lawrence	107	(11)
Recognition in H.D.'s Mature Poetry	118	(4)
Egocentric History: Trilogy	122	(8)
Chapter 4. T.S. Eliot, Women, and Democracy	130	(22)
Romanticism and Classicism	132	(3)
Bourgeois Women in Eliot's Early Poems	135	(4)
Democratized Voices: Ara Vos Prec and The Waste Land	139	(4)
'Authority not democracy': Eliot's Essays of the 1920's	143	(6)
Against Liberalism: After Strange Gods	149	(3)
Chapter 5. Mina Loy: Pyscho-Democracy	152	(32)
Women of the Future: Loy's Feminism, 1910-1916	159	(8)
Virgins and Erotic Garbage: Loy's Early Poems	167	(9)
Loy's Psycho-Democracy	176	(8)
Conclusion	184	(4)
Bibliography	188	(7)
Index	195