Modernisms: A Literary Guide / Edition 1

by Peter Nicholls

Overview

The recent enthusiasm for things postmodern has often produced a caricature of Modernism as monolithic and reactionary. Peter Nicholls argues instead that the distinctive feature of Modernism is its diversity. Through a lively analysis of each of Modernism's main literary movements, he explores the connections between the new stylistic developments and the shifting politics of gender and authority.

Nicholls introduces a wealth of literary experimentation, beginning with Baudelaire and Mallarmé and moving forward to the first avant-gardes. Close readings of key texts monitor the explosive histories of Futurism, Expressionism, Cubism, Dada, and Surrealism, histories that allow Anglo-American Modernism to be seen in a strikingly different light. In revealing Modernism's broad and varied terrain, Nicholls evokes the richness of a cultural moment that continues to shape our own.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520201033
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	08/24/1995
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	382
Product dimensions:	5.38(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Peter Nicholls is Subject Chair of American Studies at the University of Sussex and the author of Ezra Pound: Politics, Economics and Writing (1984).

Table of Contents

Preface to the Second Edition.- List of Abbreviations.- Acknowledgements.- Introduction: Of a Certain Tone.- Ironies of the Modern.- Breaking the Rules: Symbolism in France.- Decadence and the Art of Death.- Paths to the Future.- A Metaphysics of Modernity: Marinetti and Italian Futurism.- Other Spaces: French Cubism and Russian Futurism.- Cruel Structures: The Development of Expressionism.- Modernity and the 'Men of 1914'.- At a Tangent: Other Modernisms.- African American Modernism.- From Fantasy to Structure: Dada and Neo-Classicism.- Other Times: The Narratives of High Modernism.- Death and Desire: The Surrealist Adventure.- Notes.- Bibliography.- Index.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

With the precision of a global positioning system, Peter Nicholls scans the width and breadth of literary modernism. This new edition of his classic study provides a lucid and useful overview of the often antithetical tendencies that revolutionized the literature of Europe and America in the first decades of the twentieth century. New maps sweep clean: Modernisms sets the record-straight by looking aslant, restoring 'tangents' to the main stage of a play that continues to inform most of our present-day literary imaginings' - Charles Bernstein, Donald T. Regan Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania, USA

'When Modernisms appeared in 1995, I wrote that it was 'the very best single study of its subject currently available'. For this new edition, Nicholls has added a dazzling, compact, remarkably comprehensive chapter on African American Modernism - a chapter that dovetails beautifully with this guide's larger narrative. Always authoritative and yet deeply personal in its emphases and tastes, Nicholls's remains the single best study of literary Modernism.' - Marjorie Perloff, Sadie Dernhyam Professor Emerita, Stanford University, USA.

'An impressive and valuable resource - the new edition retains a distinctive character and is further improved by the addition of the new chapter on the Harlem Renaissance' - Richard Brown, University of Leeds, UK

Editorial Reviews

"With the precision of a global positioning system, Peter Nicholls scans the width and breadth of literary modernism. This new edition of his classic study provides a lucid and useful overview of the often antithetical tendencies that revolutionized the poetry of Europe and Ameroca in the first decade of the twentieth centiry. New maps sweep clean: Modernisms sets the record-straight by looking aslant, restoring 'tangents' to the main stage of a play that continues to inform most of our present-day literary imaginings" -- Charles Bernstein, David Gray Professor of Poetry and Letters, State University of New York at Buffalo, USA

"When Modernisms appeared in 1995, I wrote that it was "the very best single study of its subject currently available". For this new edition, Nicholls has added a dazzling, compact, remarkably comprehensive chapter on African American Modernism - a chapter that dovetails beautifully with this guide's larger narrative. Always authoritative and yet deeply personal in its emphases and tastes, Nicholls's remains the single best study of literary Modernism." -- Marjorie Perloff, Sadie Dernhyam Professor Emerita, Stanford University, USA

"An impressive and valuable resource - the new edition retains a distinctive character and is further improved by the addition of the new chaper on the Harlem Renaissance" -- Richard Brown, University of Leeds, UK

From the Publisher