The period 1890 to 1950 is remarkable for radical innovation and literary development. This volume looks back to the origins of Modernism and the traditions that shaped it, examining texts from France, America, England and Ireland to provide a stimulating and original take on this unique movement in literary history. Combining textual analysis with key critical approaches, the book considers central texts such as Eliot's The Waste Land, Joyce's The Portrait of the Artist and Lawrence's Women in Love alongside wider debates on "Literature and War", "Modernism, Music and the Visual Arts" and "Modernism and its Critics".
Part One: Introduction
Part Two: A Cultural Overview
Part Three: Texts, Writers and Contexts
Modernist poetry - French Origins, English Settings: Baudelaire, Mallarmé and the Georgians
o Extended commentary: Imagism
Modernist poetry - America, Ireland and England: Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Yeats and Eliot
o Extended commentary: T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land (1922)
· The Modernist novel and tradition: Flaubert, Mann, Kafka and Joyce
Extended commentary: Joyce, The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)
· The Modernist novel II: Saki, Woolf and Lawrence
Extended commentary: Lawrence, Women in Love (1920)
The Modernist play I - Ibsen, Strindberg, Pirandello and Beckett
Extended commentary: Beckett,Endgame (1957)
The Modernist play II - Conrad, Brecht and Artaud
o Extended commentary: Brecht, Baal (1923)
Part Four: Critical theories and Debates
Literature and War
Modernist Print Culture
Modernism, Music the Visual Arts
Modernism and its Critics
Part Five: Resources
Timeline
Further reading
Index
