9781408204764

Modernist Literature 1890-1950 (York Notes Companions)

The period 1890 to 1950 is remarkable for radical innovation and literary development. This Companion 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 etc. Author: Gary Day. (339 pages) Level: Gymnasiet (esp. A)

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York Notes Companions:

  • Analysis of key texts and debates
  • Extended commentaries provide further in-depth analysis of individual texts
  • Notes contain extra context and explanations of literary terms
  • Historical, social and cultural contexts explored in introductory chapters and alongside discussions
  • Modern critical theory and perspectives in practice
  • Timelines and annotated further reading

CONTENTS:

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