Modernist writing and reactionary politics
By: Charles Ferrall.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2001
Place of publication: Cambridge, UK; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 202
Subjects: English literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism; Modernism (Literature) -- English-speaking countries; Politics and literature -- English-speaking countries -- History -- 20th century; Literature and society -- English-speaking countries -- History -- 20th century; American literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism; Fascism in literature
Description: "In Modernist Writing and Reactionary Politics, Charles Ferrall argues that the politics of Yeats, Pound, Eliot, Lawrence, and Wyndham Lewis were a response to the increasing separation of art from a society undergoing a second industrial revolution. Fascism became attractive to these writers because it promised to reintegrate art into society while simultaneously guaranteeing its autonomy. As a kind of parodic avantgarde, it therefore allowed the reactionaries to be both 'primitive' and 'modern' at the same time. Yet with the exception of Pound and Yeats, these writers all finally rejected fascism preferring instead to see the aesthetic as a sphere in permanent opposition to liberal democracy, rather than the basis for a new social order. Individual chapters focus on Yeats and decolonisation, Pound and 'the Jews', Eliot and the uncanny, Lawrence and homosexuality, and Lewis and the Cartesian primitive. Ferrall's account of why some of the greatest writers of the early twentieth century became involved in reactionary politics offers new insights into the relation between modernist aesthetics, technology and avant-gardism."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 186-198) and index.