
Late Modernism
Politics, Fiction, and the Arts between the World Wars
Tyrus Miller(Author)
University of California Press
1st Edition
Will be published approx. on 25. February 1999
Book
Paperback/Softback
280 pages
978-0-520-21648-8 (ISBN)
Description
Tyrus Miller breaks new ground in this study of early twentieth-century literary and artistic culture. Whereas modernism studies have generally concentrated on the vital early phases of the modernist revolt, Miller focuses on the turbulent later years of the 1920s and 1930s, tracking the dissolution of modernism in the interwar years. In the post-World War I reconstruction and the worldwide crisis that followed, Miller argues, new technological media and the social forces of mass politics opened fault lines in individual and collective experience, undermining the cultural bases of the modernist movement. He shows how late modernists attempted to discover ways of occupying this new and often dangerous cultural space. In doing so they laid bare the ruin of the modernist aesthetic at the same time as they transcended its limits. In his wide-ranging theoretical and historical discussion, Miller relates developments in literary culture to tendencies in the visual arts, cultural and political criticism, mass culture, and social history.
He excavates Wyndham Lewis's hidden borrowings from Al Jolson's The Jazz Singer; situates Djuna Barnes between the imagery of haute couture and the intellectualism of Duchamp; uncovers Beckett's affinities with Giacometti's surrealist sculptures and the Bolshevik clowns Bim-Bom; and considers Mina Loy as both visionary writer and designer of decorative lampshades. Miller's lively and engaging readings of culture in this turbulent period reveal its surprising anticipation of our own postmodernity.
He excavates Wyndham Lewis's hidden borrowings from Al Jolson's The Jazz Singer; situates Djuna Barnes between the imagery of haute couture and the intellectualism of Duchamp; uncovers Beckett's affinities with Giacometti's surrealist sculptures and the Bolshevik clowns Bim-Bom; and considers Mina Loy as both visionary writer and designer of decorative lampshades. Miller's lively and engaging readings of culture in this turbulent period reveal its surprising anticipation of our own postmodernity.
More details
Edition
First Edition
Language
English
Place of publication
Berkerley
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
13 b-w photographs
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 18 mm
Weight
408 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-520-21648-8 (9780520216488)
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
Person
Tyrus Miller is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature, English, and Film Studies at Yale University.
Content
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
PART ONE: THEORIZING LATE MODERNISM
1. Introduction: The Problem of Late Modernism
2. The End of Modernism: Rationalization, Spectacle, and Laughter
PART TWO: READING LATE MODERNISM
3. The Self Condemned: Wyndham Lewis
4? Beyond Rescue: Djuna Barnes
5? Improved Out of All Knowledge: Samuel Beckett
EPILOGUE
6. More or Less Silent: Mina Loy's Novel Inset
Notes
Index
Acknowledgments
PART ONE: THEORIZING LATE MODERNISM
1. Introduction: The Problem of Late Modernism
2. The End of Modernism: Rationalization, Spectacle, and Laughter
PART TWO: READING LATE MODERNISM
3. The Self Condemned: Wyndham Lewis
4? Beyond Rescue: Djuna Barnes
5? Improved Out of All Knowledge: Samuel Beckett
EPILOGUE
6. More or Less Silent: Mina Loy's Novel Inset
Notes
Index