Literary Modernism and Beyond
The Extended Vision and the Realms of the Text
- 336 pages
- English
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About This Book
Early modernists turned to theories of consciousness and aestheticism to combat what they saw as the hostility of naturalism and to find new ways of thinking about reality. This consciousness took various forms, including a Jamesian sense of moral ambiguity, Proustian time spots, and B ergsonian intuition, but the Nietzschean theory that reality depends on perception connected them all. This modernist movement reached a distinguished level of achievement with novelists Thomas Mann, Marcel Proust, and James Joyce, but a succession of counterinfluences transformed it after World War II, when elitism and a desire for a homogeneous culture gave way to diversity and elements of mass culture. In Literary Modernism and Beyond, Richard Lehan tracks the evolution of the movement from its emergence in the late nineteenth century to its recent incarnations.
In this wide-ranging study, Lehan demonstrates how and why the "originary vision" of modernism changed radically after it gained prominence. With critical discussions on a wide variety of major modernist writers, intellectuals, and artists and their works -- including Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, T. S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Andre Gide, Franz Kafka, Zora Neale Hurston, Ian Fleming, and J. K. Rowling -- Lehan examines the large-scale changes that came as critical authority moved from one generation to another. Both popular culture and literary criticism -- especially "critical theory" -- acted as key agents of change, and structuralism, poststructuralism, and concerns with gender and race also greatly influenced the movement. Along with a process of decline and a nihilism that emerged from the modernist movement, these changes created a new literary reality and with it a new textuality.
Literary Modernism and Beyond treats modernism's major innovations of myth, symbol, and structure not as individual pieces but as interrelated contributions to a historical process, the product of three generations of transformations. Lehan's analysis provides a more complete understanding than ever before of the movement itself.
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A CHRONOLOGY OF LITERARY MODERNISM
1853–74 | Der Ring des Nibelungen, by Richard Wagner |
1857 | Les fleurs du mal, by Charles Pierre Baudelaire Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert |
1862 | Salammbo, by Gustave Flaubert |
1869 | A Sentimental Education, by Gustave Flaubert |
1870–71 | France declares war on Prussia on 19 July. On 2 September, France is defeated at Sedan, ending the Second Empire. The Third Republic is proclaimed on 4 September. |
1871 | The Paris Commune (21–28 May) The Descent of Man, by Charles Darwin |
1871–93 | Rougan-Macquart novels, by Émile Zola |
1872 | Erewhon, by Samuel Butler |
1873 | The Renaissance, by Walter Pater |
1874 | First impressionist exhibition in Paris. Impressionists exhibited their work outside official salons: Monet (1840–1926), Renoir (1841–1919), and Pissarro (1830–1903) worked outdoors, often painting urban settings. Manet (1832–1883), Degas (1834–1917), and Cézanne (1839–1906) joined the group. The Temptation of Saint Anthony, by Gustave Flaubert |
1877 | The American, by Henry James |
1878 | Life and Habit, by Samuel Butler |
1879 | “Daisy Miller,” by Henry James Evolution, Old and New, by Samuel Butler |
1880 | Le roman expérimental, by Émile Zola |
1881 | Bouvard et Pécuchet, by Charles Flaubert The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James |
1884 | À rebours, by Joris-Karl Huysmans Thus Spake Zarathustra, by Friedrich Nietzsche |
1885 | Leopold II, king of Belgium, takes possession of the Congo Marius the Epicurean, by Walter Pater |
1886 | Van Gogh (1853–1890) and Gauguin (1848–1903) settle in France, marking the rise of expressionism The Bostonians and The Princess Casamassima, by Henry James Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson, introduces the theme of the double She, by Rider Haggard |
1890 | The Golden Bough, by Sir James George Frazer Principles of Psychology, by William, James The Tragic Muse, by Henry James |
1891 | The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde |
1892 | “The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman |
1893 | Degeneration, by Max Nordau |
1894 | Dreyfus affair divides France |
1895 | The Time Machine, by H. G. Wells |
1896 | The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, by Gustave Le Bon The Island of Dr. Moreau, by H. G. Wells Matter and Memory, by Henri Bergson |
1898 | The Nigger of the Narcissus, by Joseph Conrad |
1899 | The Awakening, by Kate Chopin The Symbolist Movement in Literature, by Arthur Symons Theory of the Leisure Class, by Thorstein Veblen When the Sleeper Wakes, by H. G. Wells. Youth and Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad, are published together as a single volume by Blackwells |
1900 | Buddenbrooks, by Thomas Mann Lord Jim, by Joseph Conrad Sister Carrie, by Theodore Dreiser |
1902 | Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad, appears as a single volume The Immoralists, by André Gide The Varieties of Religious Experience, by William James |
1903 | The Ambassadors, by Henry James Tonio Kröger, by Thomas Mann The Way of All Flesh, by Samuel Butler |
1904 | Nostromo, by Joseph Conrad |
1905 | The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton A Modern Utopia, by H. G. Wells |
1906–11 | The Making of Americans, by Gertrude Stein |
1907 | Creative Evolution, by Henri Bergson The Education of Henry Adams, by Henry Adams Pragmatism, by William James The Secret Agent, by Joseph Conrad |
1907–11 | Cours de linguistique générale, by Ferdinand de Saussure |
1907–19 | À la recherche du temps perdu, by Marcel Proust |
1908 | Picasso experiments with cubism |
1909 | Three Lives, by Gertrude Stein |
1911 | Exhibition of postimpressionist paintings Under Western Eyes, by Joseph Conrad |
1912 | Chance, by Joseph Conrad Death in Venice, by Thomas Mann |
1913 | The Custom of the Country, by Edith Wharton O Pioneers! by Willa Cather St Petersburg, by Andrei Bely |
1914 | Assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand on 24 June, leading to the outbreak of World War I. On 3 August, the Battle of the Marne. Four years of trench warfare follow. Tender Buttons, by Gertrude Stein |
1914–18 | Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man, by Thomas Mann |
1915 | The Good Soldier, by Ford Madox Ford “The Metamorphosis,” by Franz Kafka The Rainbow, by D. H. Lawrence “Sunday Morning,” by Wallace Stevens Victory, by Joseph Conrad |
1916 | The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce |
1917 | America enters World War I on 2 April. In October, Lenin gets control of industrial and military soviets, an event followed by three years of civil war. |
1918 | Dada Manifesto, by Tristan Tzara My Antonia, by Willa Cather |
1918–22 | The Decline of the West, by Oswald Spengler |
1919 | Treaty of Versailles ends World War I Winesburg, Ohio, by Sherwood Anderson |
1920 | Main Street, by Sinclair Lewis The Rescue, by Joseph Conrad This Side of Paradise, by F. Scott Fitzgerald Women in Love, by D. H. Lawrence |
1921 | The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton |
1922 | A Lost Lady, by Willa Cather Ulysses, by James Joyce The Waste Land, by T. S. Eliot |
1923 | Cane, by Jean Toomer Spring and All, by William Carlos Williams Studies in Classic American Literature, by D. H. Lawrence |
1924 | The Magic Mountain, by Thomas Mann The Principles of Literary Criticism, by I. A. Richards We, by Yevgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin |
1924–28 | Parade’s End, by Ford Madox Ford |
1925 | An American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser The Counterfeiters, by André Gide Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf Dark Laughter, by Sherwood Anderson The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald In the American Grain, by William Carlos Williams The Trial,... |
Table of contents
- COVER
- TITLE PAGE
- COPYRIGHT PAGE
- DEDICATION
- CONTENTS
- PREFACE
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- I MODERNISMS
- II EARLY MODERNISM
- III THE REALMS OF THE TEXT
- IV TIME AND SPACE
- V FROM ROMANCE TO NIHILISM
- VI POSTMODERNISM AND MASS CULTURE
- [1] A CHRONOLOGY OF LITERARY MODERNISM
- [2] FROM EMPIRE TO WAR: A RETROSPECTIVE OF LITERARY MODERNISM
- [3] BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
- NOTES
- SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
- INDEX