Title: Modernist fiction : an introduction /
Authors: Stevenson, Randall.
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky,
Year: 1992
Subjects: English fiction History and criticism; Modernism (Literature) Great Britain
Abstract: To many writers of the early twentieth century, modernism meant not only the reshaping or abandonment of tradition but also an interest in psychology and in new concepts of space, time, art, and language. Randall Stevenson's important new analysis of the genre presents a lucid, comprehensive introduction to modernist fiction, covering a wide range of writers and works. Drawing on narrative theory and cultural history, Stevenson offers fresh insights into the work of such important modernists as Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, D.H. Lawrence, Wyndham Lewis, Dorothy Richardson, May Sinclair, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce. In addition he discusses the work of Marcel Proust, an important figure in the development of modernism in Europe. This illuminating book places the new imagination of the modernist age in its historical context and looks at how and why the pressures of early twentieth-century life led to the development of this distinctive and influential literary form. This accessible account of modernism, modernity, and the novel will be welcomed by students, scholars, and general readers alike.
Contents: Modernism and modernity -- Space -- Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Ford Maddox Ford -- D.H. Lawrence -- Dorothy Richardson and May Sinclair -- James Joyce -- Virginia Woolf -- Background and context -- Time -- Striking clocks and new chronologies -- The time philosophy -- Mean time -- Frament or flow -- Cracks and chasms: time and the Western Front -- Art -- Art and the novel -- The revolution of language -- Modernism and postmodernism -- Value -- The end of modernism -- The evasions of modernism -- The value of modernism.