Description
Book SynopsisThis collection of original critical essays, newly available in paperback, launches an ambitious, long-term project marking out a new period and style in twentieth-century literary history.
Trade ReviewThis collection offers more than a series of case studies illustrating what Bluemel (Monmouth Univ.) calls "intermodernism." It creates a new paradigm for the study of 20th-century literature and culture. Building on her own George Orwell and the Radical Eccentrics (CH, Sep'05, 43-0148), the editor brings together major scholars of 1930s-40s Britain under the rubric of intermodernism, defined in her compelling introductory essay as an aesthetic, institutional, and ideological category meant to delineate the space between modernism and postmodernism and to serve as a critical tool ! The extensive bibliography and appendix ("Who Are the Intermodernists?") will facilitate further research, especially by including the locations of archival material ! Highly recommended. -- J. M. Utell, Widener University Choice 'The recovery work of Intermodernism's contributors makes the case that adding another prefix to modernism will help clarify twentieth-century cultural studies and add new voices to humanities classrooms and scholarship.' -- Pennsylvania Literary Journal Intermodernism is an attractive book in its own right, full of thoughtful and often surprising readings of particular texts, writers, and movements. It is also a welcome and substantial contribution to the ongoing rediscovery of mid-twentieth century British writing: that "fascinating, compelling and grossly neglected" body of work, as Kristin Bluemel sums it up in her opening paragraph. -- Marina MacKay, Washington University in St. Louis Journal of British Studies This collection offers more than a series of case studies illustrating what Bluemel (Monmouth Univ.) calls "intermodernism." It creates a new paradigm for the study of 20th-century literature and culture. Building on her own George Orwell and the Radical Eccentrics (CH, Sep'05, 43-0148), the editor brings together major scholars of 1930s-40s Britain under the rubric of intermodernism, defined in her compelling introductory essay as an aesthetic, institutional, and ideological category meant to delineate the space between modernism and postmodernism and to serve as a critical tool ! The extensive bibliography and appendix ("Who Are the Intermodernists?") will facilitate further research, especially by including the locations of archival material ! Highly recommended. 'The recovery work of Intermodernism's contributors makes the case that adding another prefix to modernism will help clarify twentieth-century cultural studies and add new voices to humanities classrooms and scholarship.' Intermodernism is an attractive book in its own right, full of thoughtful and often surprising readings of particular texts, writers, and movements. It is also a welcome and substantial contribution to the ongoing rediscovery of mid-twentieth century British writing: that "fascinating, compelling and grossly neglected" body of work, as Kristin Bluemel sums it up in her opening paragraph.
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements; Introduction: What is Intermodernism?, Kristin Bluemel; Part I: Work; 1. A Cassandra with Clout: Storm Jameson, Little Englander and Good European, Elizabeth Maslen; 2. Englands Ancient and Modern: Sylvia Townsend Warner, T. H. White and the Fictions of Medieval Englishness, Janet Montefiore; 3. 'A Strange Field': Region and Class in the Novels of Harold Heslop, John Fordham; Part II: Community; 4. Stella Gibbons, Ex-Centricity and the Suburb, Faye Hammill; 5. Intermodern Travel: J. B. Priestley's English and American Journeys, Lisa Colletta; Part III: War; 6. Under Suspicion: The Plotting of Britain in World War II Detective Spy Fiction, Phyllis Lassner; 7. Trials and Errors: The Heat of the Day and Postwar Culpability, Allan Hepburn; 8. Rebecca West's Palimpsestic Praxis: Crafting the Intermodern Voice of Witness, Debra Rae Cohen; Part IV: Documents; 9. The Intermodern Assumption of the Future: William Empson, Charles Madge and Mass-Observation, Nick Hubble; 10. 'The creative treatment of actuality': John Grierson, Documentary Cinema and 'Fact' in the 1930s, Laura Marcus; Appendix: Who Are the Intermodernists?; Select Bibliography; Notes on Contributors; Index.
