Haunting Modernity and the Gothic Presence in British Modernist Literature [electronic resource] /
Darvay, Daniel.author.
This book explores the complex relationship between British modernism and the Gothic tradition over several centuries of modern literary and cultural history. Illuminating the blind spots of Gothic criticism and expanding the range of cultural material that falls under the banner of this tradition, Daniel Darvay focuses on how late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British writers transform the artifice of Gothic ruins into building blocks for a distinctively modernist architecture of questions, concerns, images, and arguments. To make this argument, Darvay takes readers back to early exemplars of the genre thematically rooted in the English Reformation, tracing it through significant Victorian transformations to finally the modernist period. Through writers such as Oscar Wilde, Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, and D. H. Lawrence, this book ultimately expands the boundaries of the Gothic genre and provides a fresh, new approach to better understanding the modernist movement.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Preface -- Introduction: Catholicism, Sacrilege and the Modern Gothic -- Labyrinths of Reason from Augustine to Wilde -- Specters of Conrad: Espionage and the Modern West -- The Haunted Museum: E. M. Forster, Italy, and the Grand Tour -- Detectives of the Mind: Virginia Woolf and the Gothic Sublime -- Dark Vibes: D. H. Lawrence and Occult Electricity -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography.
This book explores the complex relationship between British modernism and the Gothic tradition over several centuries of modern literary and cultural history. Illuminating the blind spots of Gothic criticism and expanding the range of cultural material that falls under the banner of this tradition, Daniel Darvay focuses on how late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British writers transform the artifice of Gothic ruins into building blocks for a distinctively modernist architecture of questions, concerns, images, and arguments. To make this argument, Darvay takes readers back to early exemplars of the genre thematically rooted in the English Reformation, tracing it through significant Victorian transformations to finally the modernist period. Through writers such as Oscar Wilde, Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, and D. H. Lawrence, this book ultimately expands the boundaries of the Gothic genre and provides a fresh, new approach to better understanding the modernist movement.
British literature.
Literature, Modern-20th century.
Literature-History and criticism.
British and Irish Literature.
Twentieth-Century Literature.
Literary History.