Modernism: Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies

As befits so notoriously ambiguous a term, 'modernism' may be studied in a wide variety of contexts. The term embraces subjects ranging from the new architectural practices of Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius, the innovative art of painters as diverse as Monet and Kandinsky, the drama of Strindberg and Jarry, the poetry of Ezra Pound and Wallace Stevens, the fiction of Joseph Conrad, William Faulkner and Gertrude Stein. This collection of resources provides readers with access to major debates relating to modernism as a set of aesthetic practices and as a product of (late) modernity.

This collection offers an overview of the history of modernism as a critical concept in Anglo-American literary criticism from the 1890s to the present day. The emphasis is on the main currents of critical debate relating to Anglo-American modernism and the contents have been organised chronologically and are presented in their entirety without editorial matter, allowing readers to access the debates about Anglo-American modernism from a given epoch.

These volume demonstrate that, far from being a reactionary or monolithic field, modernism was a richly diverse area of cultural activity and remains a dynamic field of critical inquiry. One of the main ways in which the collection seeks to offer this corrective is in its attention to the relationship between modernism and popular culture.