Description
Book SynopsisScrutinizing the aesthetic and ideological in the works by Lawrence, Woolf, and Eliot, this book gives a different perspective on Modernism and what are considered to be its principal features. In that respect, fragmentation, disunity, relativity of things, break with tradition, as well as the depiction of life's disorder, are disputed and seen as aesthetic means for the promotion of certain ideologies.Aesthetics and Ideology of D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, and T. S. Eliot offers a smooth transition from general discussion and revision of some fixed concepts related to Modernism, through individual authors and their major works to the conclusion where the main findings are summarized and further explicated.Apart from dealing with Modernism in general, Aesthetics and Ideology of D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf and T. S. Eliot presents a somewhat different view on the authors it deals with. They are not only seen as opponents of established religious, political, and social views, but t
Trade ReviewPetar Penda’s contextual approach to the work of Lawrence, Woolf, and Eliot reads the authors within and against the social systems of the early twentieth century. In part a consideration of the literary work’s relation to history, in part an exploration of the intricate connections between the ideologies of the text and those of the author, this book considers what no other study of Modernist aesthetics has looked at before: the politics of social and class consciousness. -- Wim Van-Mierlo, Loughborough University
No question about modernism could me more important, or more pressing: What really was the ideology of modernist aesthetics, in all its complexity, between the extremes of subversive and reactionary politics? Penda’s answer to this question offers indispensable new insight into the work of the major modernists, a powerful and timely redefinition of the politics of modernist literature. -- Jesse Matz, Kenyon College
Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. Modernism Reconsidered/ Reconsidering Modernism 2. Politics, Sex, and Identity in Lady Chatterley’s Lover 3. Private and Public Self: Ideology of the Aesthetic in Mrs. Dalloway 4. To the Lighthouse—Structure Hidden Behind ‘Chaotic’ Narrative Technique 5. Politics of Multiple Identities in Orlando 6. Aesthetics of Disorder in The Waste Land 7. Aesthetics of Nihilism: Convention in the Service of Ideology inT. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets 8. Conclusion
