Synopses & Reviews
Focusing on the work of T.E. Hulme, the Men of 1914, the Bloomsbury Group, T.S. Eliot, and John Middleton Murry, Gillies convincingly demonstrates that Bergson's theories underlie the literary aesthetics of the period that forms the intellectual basis of modern literature. She then turns her critical eye to five major modernist writers - T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Dorothy Richardson, and Joseph Conrad - and provides insightful and detailed Bergsonian readings of their major works. Drawing on material not previously available, Gillies persuasively argues that Bergson was a major intellectual force in British literature during the first thirty years of the twentieth century.
Review
"The value of Henri Bergson and British Modernism lies in its evaluation of the extent and force of Bergson's influence on early modernism in Britain. Nowhere as comprehensively as here has the terrain been mapped and all the fragments brought together." John Xiros Cooper, Department of English, University of British Columbia.
Synopsis
Mary Ann Gillies shows that French philosopher Henri Bergson played a central role in the development of British literary modernism. While Bergson's influence on modernism has long been debated, this is the first thorough, current examination of the ways in which his ideas are manifest in British modernism.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. [201]-207) and index.