Intermodernism
Literary Culture in Mid-Twentieth-Century Britain
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Edinburgh University Press
Published:5th Oct '09
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
This collection of original critical essays challenges readers to accept a new term, new critical category, and new literary history for twentieth-century British literature. It takes as its primary subject the fascinating and typically neglected writing of the years of the Depression and World War II - the fiction, memoirs, criticism, and journalism of writers such as Elizabeth Bowen, Storm Jameson, William Empson, George Orwell, J. B. Priestley, Harold Heslop, T. H. White, Rebecca West, John Grierson, Margery Allingham, and Stella Gibbons. Divided into four sections: Work; Community; War; and Documents, the voluem focuses on qualities that distinguish these writers' literary efforts from those of the modernists or postmodernists, elucidating the web of historical, institutional, and personal relationships that together define intermodernism.Researching, analyzing, and theorising intermodernism, this book focuses on three kinds of intermodern features in texts that are typically ignored in accounts of modernism or The Auden Generation: cultural features (intermodernists typically represent working-class and working middle-class cultures); political features (intermodernists are politically radical, 'radically eccentric'); and literary features (intermodernists are committed to non-canonical, even 'middlebrow' or 'mass' genres). To encourage future scholarship on intermodernism, the volume concludes with an appendix, 'Who Were the Intermodernists?', and a bibliography of primary and secondary sources.Key features* Presents ten original chapters written by active and prominent scholars of mid-century British literary culture* Launches an ambitious, long-term project that marks out a new period and style in twentieth-century literary history* Broad-ranging, treating novels, journalism, manifestos, short stories, film, poetry, memoirs, letters, and travel narratives of the interwar, war, and immediately post-World War II years * Describes more than seventy
This collection offers more than a series of case studies illustrating what Bluemel (Monmouth Univ.) calls "intermodernism." It creates a new paradigm for the study of 20th-century literature and culture. Building on her own George Orwell and the Radical Eccentrics (CH, Sep'05, 43-0148), the editor brings together major scholars of 1930s-40s Britain under the rubric of intermodernism, defined in her compelling introductory essay as an aesthetic, institutional, and ideological category meant to delineate the space between modernism and postmodernism and to serve as a critical tool … The extensive bibliography and appendix ("Who Are the Intermodernists?") will facilitate further research, especially by including the locations of archival material … Highly recommended. -- J. M. Utell, Widener University * Choice *
Intermodernism is an attractive book in its own right, full of thoughtful and often surprising readings of particular texts, writers, and movements. It is also a welcome and substantial contribution to the ongoing rediscovery of mid-twentieth century British writing: that “fascinating, compelling and grossly neglected” body of work, as Kristin Bluemel sums it up in her opening paragraph. -- Marina MacKay, Washington University in St. Louis * Journal of British Studies *
...a richly rewarding essay which will send the reader back to the original texts with new thoughts and new questions. -- Helen Southerland * The Journal of the Sylvia Townsend Warner Society *
This collection offers more than a series of case studies illustrating what Bluemel (Monmouth Univ.) calls "intermodernism." It creates a new paradigm for the study of 20th-century literature and culture. Building on her own George Orwell and the Radical Eccentrics (CH, Sep'05, 43-0148), the editor brings together major scholars of 1930s-40s Britain under the rubric of intermodernism, defined in her compelling introductory essay as an aesthetic, institutional, and ideological category meant to delineate the space between modernism and postmodernism and to serve as a critical tool … The extensive bibliography and appendix ("Who Are the Intermodernists?") will facilitate further research, especially by including the locations of archival material … Highly recommended. -- J. M. Utell, Widener University
The recovery work of Intermodernism's contributors makes the case that adding another prefix to modernism will help clarify twentieth-century cultural studies and add new voices to humanities classrooms and scholarship.' -- Pennsylvania Literary Journal
ISBN: 9780748635092
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 547g
264 pages