A Concise Companion to Modernism

by Bradshaw, David

• ISBN13: 9780631220558
• ISBN10: 0631220550
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-11-22
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

This concise Companion offers an innovative approach to understanding the Modernist literary mind in Britain, focusing on the intellectual and cultural contexts which shaped it. The book consists of twelve chapters written by leading scholars, each spotlighting ideas emanating from a particular field which helped to shape Modernism, including eugenics, primitivism, Freudianism, and Nietzscheanism. Each contributor deals with his or her topic in some depth, but also pays attention to the impact it had on overarching issues. At the same time, the contributors identify contemporary developments in other disciplines, especially art, architecture, music, film, and philosophy, which paralleled developments in poetry, fiction, and drama. Each chapter concludes with a brief guide to further reading. Through reading this Companion, students will gain an understanding of Modernism as a historical and cultural phenomenon, as well as a literary movement.

Author Biography

David Bradshaw is Hawthornden Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Worcester College, University of Oxford. Among other volumes, he has edited Brave New World (1994), The Hidden Huxley (1994), Women in Love (1998), Mrs Dalloway (2000), Decline and Fall (2001), and The Good Soldier (2002). He has also published extensively on Virginia Woolf, Modernism, and various aspects of literature and politics in the 1930s. He is an Editor of the Review of English Studies and a Fellow of the English Association.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Notes on Contributors	viii
Chronology	xi
Introduction	1	(5)
David Bradshaw
The Life Sciences: ``Everybody nowadays talks about evolution''	6	(28)
Angelique Richardson
Eugenics: ``They should certainly be killed''	34	(22)
David Bradshaw
Nietzscheanism: ``The Superman and the all-too-human''	56	(19)
Michael Bell
Anthropology: ``The latest form of evening entertainment''	75	(20)
Jeremy MacClancy
Bergsonism: ``Time out of mind''	95	(21)
Mary Ann Gillies
Psychoanalysis in Britain: ``The rituals of destruction''	116	(22)
Stephen Frosh
Language: ``History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake''	138	(20)
April McMahon
Technology: ``Multiplied man''	158	(21)
Tim Armstrong
The Concept of the State 1880--1939: ``The discredit of the State is a sign that it has done its work well''	179	(21)
Sarah Wilkinson
Physics: ``A strange footprint''	200	(21)
Michael H. Whitworth
Modernist Publishing: ``Nomads and mapmakers''	221	(22)
Peter D. McDonald
Reading: ```Mind hungers' common and uncommon''	243	(19)
Todd Avery
Patrick Brantlinger
Select Bibliography	262	(4)
Index	266