Publisher Description

This Cambridge History of Modernism is the first comprehensive history of modernism in the distinguished Cambridge Histories series. It identifies a distinctive temperament of 'modernism' within the 'modern' period, establishing the circumstances of modernized life as the ground and warrant for an art that becomes 'modernist' by virtue of its demonstrably self-conscious involvement in this modern condition. Following this sensibility from the end of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth, tracking its manifestations across pan-European and transatlantic locations, the forty-three chapters offer a remarkable combination of breadth and focus. Prominent scholars of modernism provide analytical narratives of its literature, music, visual arts, architecture, philosophy, and science, offering circumstantial accounts of its diverse personnel in their many settings. These historically informed readings offer definitive accounts of the major work of twentieth-century cultural history and provide a new cornerstone for the study of modernism in the current century.

Author Biography

Vincent Sherry is Howard Nemerov Professor in the Humanities and Professor of English at Washington University, St Louis. A prominent scholar of modernism, he is the author of a number of major books in this field, including The Great War and the Language of Modernism (2003), James Joyce's Ulysses (1995, 2005) and Ezra Pound, Wyndham Lewis, and Radical Modernism (1993). He has also written The Uncommon Tongue: The Poetry and Criticism of Geoffrey Hill (1987) and edited the Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the First World War (2005).

Table of Contents

Introduction. A history of 'modernism' Vincent Sherry; Part I. Modernism in Time: Framing essay Vincent Sherry; 1. Modernist temporality: the science and philosophy and aesthetics of temporality from 1880 Tim Armstrong; 2. Ahead of time: the avant-gardes Jed Rasula; 3. At other times: Modernism and the 'primitive' David Richards; 4. The long turn of the century Vincent Sherry; 5. The 1910s and the Great War Mark Morrisson; 6. On or about 1922: annus mirabilis and the other 1920s Michael Levenson; 7. The 1930s, the Second World War, and late Modernism Leo Mellor; Part II. Modernism in Space: Framing essay Vincent Sherry; 8. Modernist spaces in science, philosophy, the arts, and society Stephen Kern; 9. The new spaces of Modernist painting Daniel Herwitz; 10. Architectures and public spaces of Modernism Miles Glendinning; 11. Modernism and the urban imaginary 1: spectacle and introspection Matthew Beaumont; 12. Modernism and the urban imaginary 2: nationalism, internationalism, and cosmopolitanism David James; 13. Modernism and the new global imaginary: a tale of two Modernisms: from Latin America, to Europe, and back again Rubén Gallo; Part III. Modernism In and Out of Kind: Genres, Composite Genres, and New Genres: Framing essay Vincent Sherry; 14. Gesamtkunstwerk Lutz Koepnick; 15. 'The condition of music': Modernism and music in the new twentieth century Ronald Schleifer and Benjamin Levy; 16. The Modernist 'novel' Marina MacKay; 17. The Modernist poem Marjorie Perloff; 18. The theatre of modernity Ben Levitas; 19. Translation Emily Wittman; 20. Literature between media David Trotter; 21. Art and its others 1: the aesthetics of technology Nicholas Daly; 22. Art and its others 2: advertisement and the little magazines Amanda Sigler; 23. Art and its others 3: aesthetics as politics Andrzej Gasiorek; 24. The 'new women' of Modernism Cristanne Miller; 25. 'The men of 1914' Colleen Lamos; 26. Modernism and the racial composite: the case of America Mark Whalan; Part IV. Modernism in Person, Modernism in Community: Framing essay Vincent Sherry; 27. A technique of unsettlement: Freud, Freudianism, and the psychology of Modernism Maud Ellmann; 28. Newer freewomen and Modernism Rachel Blau DuPlessis; 29. Russian Modernism: Kandinsky, Stravinsky, and Mayakovsky Catriona Kelly; 30. French Modernism: Gide, Proust, and Larbaud Jean-Michel Rabaté; 31. Viennese Modernism: Musil, Rilke, Schoenberg Stanley Corngold; 32. The poetics of community: Thomas Mann, Joseph Conrad, Franz Kafka Tobias Boes; 33. Picasso, Stein, Apollinaire Willard Bohn; 34. Darkening freedom: Yeats, Joyce, Beckett Vicki Mahaffey; 35. F. T. Marinetti, Wyndham Lewis, and Tristan Tzara Lawrence Rainey; 36. Pound, Eliot, Hemingway Ronald Bush; 37. Non-metropolitan Modernism: E. M. Forster, D. H. Lawrence, William Faulkner Howard Booth; 38. Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, Rebecca West Laura Marcus; 39. Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, and Djuna Barnes Michael North; 40. Bertolt Brecht, Sergei Eisenstein, Leni Riefenstahl Nora Alter; 41. Theme and variations in American verse: H. D., Marianne Moore, and Wallace Stevens Robin Schulze; 42. Letters crossing the color-line: Modernist anxiety and the mixed-race figure in the work of Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and William Carlos Williams James Smethurst; 43. Modernism and reification: Lukács, Benjamin, Adorno C. D. Blanton; Epilogue. Modernism after Postmodernism Steven Connor; Bibliography.

Review

'The Cambridge History of Modernism is ambitious, thorough, and will be invaluable for researchers and educators … The volume covers a huge amount of ground, probing modernist sensibilities with attention to time, space, aesthetics, genre, gender, race, technology, and politics in 43 wide-ranging essays. The Cambridge History of Modernism is destined to become a landmark piece of modernist scholarship … Thankfully, Sherry's editorship has produced a text that earns the status it is destined to achieve. Much care and attention has gone into making this a clear and coherent volume that explains and justifies its choices, rather than taking anything about modernism as a given.' Gemma Moss, Journal of D. H. Lawrence Studies
'… Sherry's The Cambridge History of Modernism is indispensable and belongs in all serious reference collections.' The Year's Work in English Studies

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Provides a conceptually coherent understanding of 'modernism' to incorporate multiple genres and individuals in transatlantic and pan-European locations.

Review Quote

'The Cambridge History of Modernism is ambitious, thorough, and will be invaluable for researchers and educators ... The volume covers a huge amount of ground, probing modernist sensibilities with attention to time, space, aesthetics, genre, gender, race, technology, and politics in 43 wide-ranging essays. The Cambridge History of Modernism is destined to become a landmark piece of modernist scholarship ... Thankfully, Sherry's editorship has produced a text that earns the status it is destined to achieve. Much care and attention has gone into making this a clear and coherent volume that explains and justifies its choices, rather than taking anything about modernism as a given.' Gemma Moss, Journal of D. H. Lawrence Studies

Promotional "Headline"

Provides a conceptually coherent understanding of 'modernism' to incorporate multiple genres and individuals in transatlantic and pan-European locations.

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