Great War Modernism

Artistic Response in the Context of War, 1914-1918

Edited by Nanette Norris - Contributions by James Brown; Gregory M. Dandeles; David A. Davis; Erika Kuhlman; Travis L. Martin; Jeffrey Mathes McCarthy; Taryn L. Okuma; Matthew David Perry; Camelia Raghinaru; Graeme Stout; Michael J. K. Walsh and Joyce Wexler

New Modernist Studies, while reviving and revitalizing modernist studies through lively, scholarly debate about historicity, aesthetics, politics, and genres, is struggling with important questions concerning the delineation that makes discussion fruitful and possible. This volume aims to explore and clarify the position of the so-called ‘core’ of literary modernism in its seminal engagement with the Great War. In studying the years of the Great War, we find ourselves once more studying ‘the giants,’ about whom there is so much more to say, as well as adding hitherto marginalized writers – and a few visual artists – to the canon. The contention here is that these war years were seminal to the development of a distinguishable literary practice which is called ‘modernism,’ but perhaps could be further delineated as ‘Great War modernism,’ a practice whose aesthetic merits can be addressed through formal analysis. This collection of essays offers new insight into canonical British/American/European modernism of the Great War period using the critical tools of contemporary, expansionist modernist studies. By focusing on war, and on the experience of the soldier and of those dealing with issues of war and survival, these studies link the unique forms of expression found in modernism with the fragmented, violent, and traumatic experience of the time.

University Press Copublishing Division / Fairleigh Dickinson University Press

Pages: 256 • Trim: 6½ x 9¼

978-1-61147-803-7 • Hardback • December 2015 • $108.00 • (£83.00)

978-1-61147-805-1 • Paperback • August 2017 • $54.99 • (£42.00)

978-1-61147-804-4 • eBook • December 2015 • $52.00 • (£40.00)

Subjects: Literary Criticism / European / General, History / Military / World War I, History / Modern / 20th Century, Literary Criticism / American / General

Great War Modernism

Artistic Response in the Context of War, 1914-1918

Hardback

Paperback

eBook

Summary

New Modernist Studies, while reviving and revitalizing modernist studies through lively, scholarly debate about historicity, aesthetics, politics, and genres, is struggling with important questions concerning the delineation that makes discussion fruitful and possible. This volume aims to explore and clarify the position of the so-called ‘core’ of literary modernism in its seminal engagement with the Great War. In studying the years of the Great War, we find ourselves once more studying ‘the giants,’ about whom there is so much more to say, as well as adding hitherto marginalized writers – and a few visual artists – to the canon. The contention here is that these war years were seminal to the development of a distinguishable literary practice which is called ‘modernism,’ but perhaps could be further delineated as ‘Great War modernism,’ a practice whose aesthetic merits can be addressed through formal analysis. This collection of essays offers new insight into canonical British/American/European modernism of the Great War period using the critical tools of contemporary, expansionist modernist studies. By focusing on war, and on the experience of the soldier and of those dealing with issues of war and survival, these studies link the unique forms of expression found in modernism with the fragmented, violent, and traumatic experience of the time.

Details

University Press Copublishing Division / Fairleigh Dickinson University Press

Pages: 256 • Trim: 6½ x 9¼

978-1-61147-803-7 • Hardback • December 2015 • $108.00 • (£83.00)

978-1-61147-805-1 • Paperback • August 2017 • $54.99 • (£42.00)

978-1-61147-804-4 • eBook • December 2015 • $52.00 • (£40.00)

Subjects: Literary Criticism / European / General, History / Military / World War I, History / Modern / 20th Century, Literary Criticism / American / General

Author

Nanette Norris is assistant professor of English at Royal Military College Saint-Jean.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Great War Modernism
Nanette Norris

Section One: Non-Combatant Responses – Nostalgia, Legacies, and Recuperations

Homeric Cheeses and the Breast of a Decrepit Nurse:
Ruskin and Marinetti on Art, War, and Peace
Michael J. K. Walsh

The Irrepressible Conflict: The Southern Agrarians and World War One
David A. Davis

“A Reconstructionary Tale”:
Ford Madox Ford’s Georgic Response to World War One
Jeffrey Mathes McCarthy

Non-Combatancy, Narrative, and Henry Green’s Pack My Bag
Taryn Okuma

Painting Abstraction/Observing Destruction at the Front
Graeme Stout

Section Two: High Modernists and the Shock of War

World War I and Messianic Voids in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse
Camelia Raghinaru

H. D. and the Secrets of Redemption
Nanette Norris

Violence and Laughter in Women in Love
Joyce Wexler

You Give Them Money, They Give You a Stuffed Dog:
Modernism and Survival in The Sun Also Rises
Gregory M. Dandeles

Section Three: Soldiers and Soldiering

Anonymity, Transnational Identity, and A German Deserter’s War Experience
Erika Kuhlman

Rosenberg’s Half-Life between Romanticism and Modernism
James Brown

From Drills to Dreams:
“Making the Mould” of Retreat in John Dos Passos’Three Soldiers
Matthew David Perry

A Necessary Aesthetics:
Modernism’s Role in Stabilizing War Narratives Through Poetry
‒ David Jones to Brian Turner (and Beyond)
Travis L. Martin

Bibliography
About the Contributors
Index