Modernism - Literary Movements, English Fiction & Prose Literature - General & Miscellaneous - Literary Criticism, Literary Criticism - General & Miscellaneous, English Fiction & Prose Literature - 20th Century - Literary Criticism
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Overview
From the end of the nineteenth century until World War II, questions concerning the ideal nature and current state of "civilization" preoccupied the British public. In a provocative work of both cultural and literary criticism, Brian W. Shaffer explores this debate, showing how representative novels of five British modernists - Joseph Conrad, D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Malcolm Lowry - address the same issues that engaged such social theorists as Herbert Spencer, Oswald Spengler, Clive Bell, and Sigmund Freud. In examining the intersection of literary discourse and cultural rhetoric, Shaffer draws on the interpretative strategies of Mikhail Bakhtin, Terry Eagleton, Clifford Geertz, and others. He demonstrates that such disparate fictions as Heart of Darkness, The Secret Agent, The Plumed Serpent, Dubliners, Ulysses, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and Under the Volcano all portray civilization in the paradoxical image of blindness and insight, obfuscation and enlightenment - as a blinding torch that captivates the eye while it obscures vision.Editorials
Booknews
Shows how, in the first four decades of the century, Conrad, Lawrence, Joyce, Woolf, and Lowry dealt with questions about the nature of civilization and, like contemporary social scientists dealing with the same questions, portrayed it in paradoxical images of blindness and insight. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)Book Details
Published
July 31, 1993
Publisher
Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press, c1993.
Pages
224
Format
Binding
ISBN
9780870238314