The Proletarian Answer to the Modernist Question
Published on 30. September 2017
Book
Hardback
224 pages
978-1-4744-1582-8 (ISBN)
Description
This book argues that British proletarian literature was a politicised form of modernism which culturally transformed Britain. Critical analysis and close readings of key works such as D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, Naomi Mitchison's We have Been Warned, Lewis Grassic Gibbon's A Scots Quair and John Sommerfield's May Day, are placed within a literary history stretching from early encounters between Ford Madox Ford and D.H. Lawrence, through Virginia Woolf's association with the Women's Co-operative Guild, and on to the activity of Mass Observation in the late 1930s and 1940s. The study analyses the way in which modernism and proletarian literature were related to an intersectional web of class and gender that took on a potent political shape following the 1926 General Strike and the Equal Franchise Act of 1928. The 1930s is revealed not as an atypical, isolated decade but as central to the literature of the twentieth century.
Reviews / Votes
...the ambitions of The Proletarian Answer tothe Modernist Question stretch far beyond the specific texts that Hubble analyses. For he is one of our sharpest thinkers about the problems of contemporary "Modernist studies" in academia... -- Leo Mellor * Times Higher Education * The Proletarian Answer to the Modernist Question is an important contribution to the necessary work of integrating it in literary history, a process that has the potential to alter the existing order in broad as well as narrow ways. -- Ben Clarke, Oxford University Press Journals Nick Hubble is a subtle and adept theorist, an engaging and authoritative guide to the political meanings of diverse literary genres and a sensitive reader with an easy reference to a broad range of key primary and secondary texts. He is an expert whose feeling for the drama of everyday life and command of history turns his modernist readers into experts on proletarian literature, too. -- Kristin Bluemel, Monmouth University
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Edinburgh
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 239 mm
Width: 163 mm
Thickness: 18 mm
Weight
476 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4744-1582-8 (9781474415828)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Nick Hubble
The Proletarian Answer to the Modernist Question
E-Book
09/2017
1st Edition
Edinburgh University Press
€24.49
Available for download
Nick Hubble
The Proletarian Answer to the Modernist Question
E-Book
09/2017
1st Edition
Edinburgh University Press
€0.00
Available for download
Person
Nick Hubble is Reader in English at Brunel University London.
Content
Introduction
1. 'Her Heritage was that Tragic Optimism': Edwardian Pastoral
2. 'The Common Life': Women and Men after the General Strike
3. 'She Had Finished with Men Forever': Lewis Grassic Gibbon's Grey Granite
4. 'The Raw Material of History': John Sommerfield's May Day
5. 'None of That "My Good Woman" Stuff': Outsider Observations
Conclusion
1. 'Her Heritage was that Tragic Optimism': Edwardian Pastoral
2. 'The Common Life': Women and Men after the General Strike
3. 'She Had Finished with Men Forever': Lewis Grassic Gibbon's Grey Granite
4. 'The Raw Material of History': John Sommerfield's May Day
5. 'None of That "My Good Woman" Stuff': Outsider Observations
Conclusion