Modernism, modernity, and Arnold Bennett
By: Robert Squillace.
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
Published: 1997
Place of publication: Lewisburg
Language: eng
Number of pages: 223
Subjects: Bennett, Arnold, 1867-1931 -- Criticism and interpretation.; Modernism (Literature) -- England.
Description: This book delineates the unique role of Arnold Bennett in the transformation of the British novel from the aesthetic, psychological, and sociopolitical assumptions of modernity to those of modernism. Early in his career, Bennett believed that the rejection of inherited traditions and authorities that was promulgated by such champions of modernity as Darwin, Marx, and even Herbert Spencer, would culminate in an assertion of personal autonomy.

Bennett eventually assimilated the modernist critique of modernity, which discovered (with the help of Freud and the First World War) an intractable human irrationality that expressed itself in the most apparently reasonable schemes for human improvement.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 212-218) and index.