The Legacies of Modernism
Historicising Postwar and Contemporary Fiction

The essays in this book trace the development of contemporary fiction through its dialogue with, rather than departure from, modernist literature.

David James (Edited by)

9781107012523, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 20 October 2011

300 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.57 kg

An engagement with the continued importance of modernism is vital for building a nuanced account of the development of the novel after 1945. Bringing together internationally distinguished scholars of twentieth- and twenty-first-century literature, these essays reveal how the most innovative writers working today draw on the legacies of modernist literature. Dynamics of influence and adaptation are traced in dialogues between authors from across the twentieth century: Lawrence and A. S. Byatt, Woolf and J. M. Coetzee, Forster and Zadie Smith. The book sets out new critical and disciplinary foundations for rethinking the very terms we use to map the novel's progression and renewal, enhancing our understanding not only of what modernism was but also what it might still become. With its global reach, The Legacies of Modernism will appeal to scholars working not only in the new modernist studies, but also in postcolonial studies and comparative literature.

Introduction: mapping modernist continuities David James
Part I. Early Legacies: Inheriting Modernism at Mid-Century and Beyond: 1. Not what it used to be: nostalgia and the legacies of modernism Randall Stevenson
2. H. E. Bates, regionalism and late modernism Dominic Head
3. Moving beyond modernism in the fiction of B. S. Johnson: charting influences and comparisons Philip Tew
Part II. Modernist Aesthetics in Transition: Character, Perception, Innovation: 4. Thinking in literature: modernism and contemporary neuroscience Patricia Waugh
5. Autonomous automata: opacity and the fugitive character in the modernist novel and after Julia Jordan
6. Pseudo-Impressionism? Jesse Matz
7. 'Advancing along the inherited path': Milan Kundera, Philip Roth and the idea of being traditionally new David James
Part III. Reassessing the Ethics of Modernist Fiction: 8. A complex legacy: modernity's uneasy discourse of ethics and responsibility Tim Woods
9. 'A renewed sense of difficulty': E. M. Forster, Iris Murdoch and Zadie Smith on ethics and form Andrzej Gasiorek
10. 'Myths of desire': D. H. Lawrence, language and ethics in A. S. Byatt's fiction Peter Preston
Part IV. Modernism's Global Afterlives: 11. Fictions of global crisis Peter Middleton
12. Representing slums and home: Chris Abani's Graceland Susan Z. Andrade
13. For translation: Virginia Woolf, J. M. Coetzee and transnational comparison Rebecca L. Walkowitz
Epilogue: finding the dreadfully real Adam Thorpe.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: from c 1900 - [DSBH]