Synopses & Reviews
Guided by the historical semantics developed in Raymond Williams' pioneering study of cultural vocabulary,
Modernism: Keywords presents a series of short entries on words used with frequency and urgency in “written modernism,” tracking cultural and literary debates and transformative moments of change.
- Highlights and exposes the salient controversies and changing cultural thought at the heart of modernism
- Goes beyond constructions of “plural modernisms” to reveal all modernist writing as overlapping and interactive in a simultaneous and interlocking mix
- Draws from a vast compilation of more than a thousand sources, ranging from vernacular prose to experimental literary forms
- Spans the “long” modernist period, from its incipient beginnings c.1880 to its post-WWII aftermath
- Approaches English written modernism in its own terms, tempering explanations of modernism often derived from European poets and painters
- Models research techniques based on digital databases and collaborative work in the humanities
Review
"Modernism Keywords will be an indispensable resource from the moment it appears. The work is rigorous in theoretical conception, broad in historical reach, and powerfully revisionary in its implications for modernist study. It falls within the distinguished legacy of Raymond Williams but also applies the most current methods to an expanding archive of modernist texts. Scholars and students at every level will keep it close at hand."
—Michael Levenson, University of Virginia
Synopsis
Modernism: Keywords presents a series of short entries explaining the diverse and often contradictory meanings of words used with frequency and urgency in “written modernism.” Spanning the “long” modernist period (from about 1880 to 1950), this work aims not to define the era’s dominant “beliefs,” but to highlight and expose its salient controversies and changing cultural thought. Guided by the cultural lexicography developed by Raymond Williams in his groundbreaking work, Keywords (1976), the entries here focus on words with unstable meanings and conflicting definitions, tracking disparities to capture pivotal matters of discussion and debate. By selecting keywords that the modernists were utilizing themselves, and by drawing from a broad and eclectic range of writings, Modernism: Keywords illuminates a path to restoring the language of the modernist period to its life in the public sphere of its time.
About the Author
Melba Cuddy-Keane is Emerita Professor, University of Toronto-Scarborough and Emerita Member of the Graduate Department of English, University of Toronto. Her publications include
Virginia Woolf, the Intellectual, and the Public Sphere (2003), the annotated edition of
Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts (2008) and, previously with Blackwell, contributions to
The Companion to Modernist Literature and Culture (2006)
and
The Companion to Narrative Theory (2005).
Adam Hammond is a SSHRC postdoctoral fellow at the University of Victoria, Canada. His publications include “The Honest and Dishonest Critic” on Mikhail Bakhtin and Erich Auerbach in Style (2012), and an essay on James Baldwin and the New Criticism in Rereading the New Criticism (2012).
Alexandra Peat is Assistant Professor of Literature at Franklin College, Switzerland. She is the author of Travel and Modernist Literature: Sacred and Ethical Journeys (2010).
Table of Contents
Credits and Acknowledgments viii
Introduction: Unsettling Modernism x
Note on References xviii
A
Advertising 1
Atom, Atomic 6
Avant-Garde 11
B
Best Seller 15
Bigness, Smallness 20
Biography, New Biography 26
C
Common Man 34
Common Mind, Group Thinking 40
Conventional, Conventionality 45
Coterie, Bloomsbury 49
D
Democracy 56
Difficulty, Obscurity 63
E
Einstein 70
Empire, Imperialism 77
F
Fascism 85
Form, Formalism 91
G
God, Gods 99
H
Hamlet 107
Highbrow, Middlebrow, Lowbrow 111
Hygiene 119
I
Impression, Impressionism 125
International, Internationalism 129
M
Manifesto 136
Modern, Modernism 139
N
Negro, New Negro 147
P
Personality, Impersonality 155
Primitive 162
Propaganda 170
Q
Queer, Gay 177
R
Race 184
Readers, Reading 191
Reality, Realism 196
Rhythm 203
S
Sentimental, Sentimentality 210
Shock, Shell Shock 214
U
Unconscious 223
Universal 231
W
Woman, New Woman 238
Words, Language 246
Index of Modernist Authors 254
Index of Modernist Keywords 263