The Cambridge Companion to the Modernist Novel

The novel is modernism's most vital and experimental genre. In this 2007 Companion leading critics explore the very significant pleasures of reading modernist novels, but also demonstrate how and why reading modernist fiction can be difficult. No one technique or style defines a novel as modernist. Instead, these essays explain the formal innovations, stylistic preferences and thematic concerns which unite modernist fiction. They also show how modernist novels relate to other forms of art, and to the social and cultural context from which they emerged. Alongside chapters on prominent novelists such as James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, as well as lesser-known authors such as Dorothy Richardson and Djuna Barnes, themes such as genre and geography, time and consciousness are discussed in detail. With a chronology and guide to further reading, this is the most accessible and informative overview of the genre available.

General essays introduce key themes and issues in modernist fiction
Further essays provide a handy guide to all major modernist novelists written in English
Chronology and guide to further reading provided

Product details

Published: May 2007
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9780521670746
Length: 274 pages
Dimensions: 224 × 157 × 17 mm
Weight: 0.44kg
Availability: Available

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Contents

Chronology
Reading the modernist novel: an introduction Morag Shiach
1. Modernists on the art of fiction Jeff Wallace
2. Early modernism Peter Brooker
3. Remembrance and tense past Ann Banfield
4. Consciousness as a stream Anne Fernihough
5. The legacies of modernism Laura Marcus
6. James Joyce and the languages of modernism Katherine Mullin
7. Tradition and revelation: moments of being in Virginia Woolf's major novels Meg Jensen
8. Wyndham Lewis and modernist satire Rebecca Beasley
9. D. H. Lawrence, organicism and the modernist novel Hugh Stevens
10. Joseph Conrad's half-written fictions Jeremy Hawthorn
11. Djuna Barnes: melancholic modernism Deborah Parsons
12. William Faulkner: an impossibly comprehensive expressivity Catherine Gunther Kodat
13. Writing lives: Dorothy Richardson, May Sinclair, Gertrude Stein Howard Finn
14. CLR James, Claude McKay, Nella Larsen, Jean Toomer: the 'black Atlantic' and the modernist novel Anna Snaith
15. Situating Samuel Beckett Lois Oppenheim
Further reading.

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About the authors

Contributors

Morag Shiach, Jeff Wallace, Peter Brooker, Ann Banfield, Anne Fernihough, Laura Marcus, Katherine Mullin, Meg Jensen, Rebecca Beasley, Hugh Stevens, Jeremy Hawthorn, Deborah Parsons, Catherine Gunther Kodat, Howard Finn, Anna Snaith, Lois Oppenheim

Editor

Morag Shiach , Queen Mary University of London
Morag Shiach is Vice-Principal (Teaching and Learning) at Queen Mary, University of London, where she is also professor of Cultural History in the School of English and Drama. Her most recent books are Modernism, Labour and Selfhood in British Literature and Culture, 1890–1930 (Cambridge University Press, 2004) and (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to the Modernist Novel (Cambridge University Press, 2007). She has published a wide range of articles on aspects of modernism, including language reform, domestic interiors and philosophies of history. She edited Feminism and Cultural Studies (1999) and has published widely on the French novelist, essayist and playwright Hélène Cixous.

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