Description
Book SynopsisDeparting from the conventional association of modernism with the city, this book reveals the beach as a surprisingly generative setting for twentieth-century literature and art. Interweaving environmental humanities, queer and feminist theory, and cultural history, Hannah Freed-Thall offers new ways of understanding modernism.
Trade ReviewField-changing books are ones that offer a new mode of thinking, way of seeing, or practice of reading—a clearly original or powerfully reimagined method.
Modernism at the Beach does just that, shifting the ground of our critical assumptions and perspectives by encouraging us to encounter the modernist beach much like William Blake might: "To see a world in a grain of sand." -- Diana Fuss, author of
Dying Modern: A Meditation on ElegyHannah Freed-Thall has written an exquisite book about the modernist beach, a liminal space where queer ecology guides literary history. An itinerary featuring Virginia Woolf, Rachel Carson, Claude McKay, and Samuel Beckett recreates on a structural level the “offbeat intimacies” and wayward encounters that each of Freed-Thall’s close readings so vividly illuminates. You’ll feel the ocean breeze, but you won’t think of beach-reading the same way again. -- Aarthi Vadde, author of
Chimeras of Form: Modernist Internationalism Beyond Europe, 1914-2014By spotlighting a common yet neglected setting of twentieth-century literature, this revelatory book lights up modernism anew. The seashore, Freed-Thall shows us, is at once a cultural fantasy of commodified leisure, an emblem of ecological violence, and an experimental site of nonnormative modes of being. To the country and the city we must now add the beach. -- Dora Zhang, author of
Strange Likeness: Description and the Modernist NovelModernism at the Beach offers a marvelous, tenacious, imaginative, revelatory discussion of the place of the beach in modern culture. In its energetic, all-encompassing writing, its wide erudition, its advocacy and sensitivity, the book is gorgeous to read. It changes how the shoreline is felt and known. -- Emma Wilson, author of
Love, Mortality, and the Moving ImageNeither home nor away, land nor water, city nor countryside, war-torn nor peaceful, private nor public, the beach is a territory where a different kind of sunlight falls on social, corporeal, and emotional realities. Freed-Thall shows us how and why modernists were drawn to the in-between realm of the beach, a place where they could, perhaps more than anywhere else, fully interrogate and reimagine the world in all its aspects. -- Barry McCrea, author of
Languages of the Night: Minor Languages and the Literary Imagination in Twentieth-Century Ireland and EuropeModernism at the Beach is an outstanding book. Freed-Thall covers expansive ground - and coast - yet chooses her critical texts carefully and concisely, weaving a range of literature, art, culture, and critical theory together effortlessly. Timely and original, creative and profound,
Modernism at the Beach is essential reading for modernists and ecocritics alike. -- Annie Williams * The British Society for Literature and Science *
This exceptionally lucid, elegantly written book elaborates an innovative argument about the role of the beach in modernist literary and artistic works. Drawing on and interrelating queer studies, ecocriticism, aesthetic theory, and modernist criticism, Freed-Thall’s luminous and incisive readings move gracefully across scales and between aesthetic objects to produce a kaleidoscopic, shifting portrait of shores and beaches. -- Margaret Ronda, author of
Remainders: American Poetry at Nature's End Welding queer theory to ecological philosophy, and drawing on a unique archive of modernist art and literature . . . Freed-Thall argues convincingly for a timely reconceptualization of the modernist beach as a multitudinous ‘stage’ for reimagining non-hierarchical social structures, for inventing new modes of sexuality and gender identity, and for attuning oneself to more-than-human and multi-scalar environmental forces. -- James Reath * Modernist Cultures *
This gorgeously written book, interspersed with arresting photographs, has much to offer those interested in modernism, oceanic studies, queer studies, and ecocriticism. -- Sari Edelstein * H-Environment, H-Net Reviews *
These works provide a timely reminder that we all remain at the mercy of the riptide currents rising inexorably around us. -- Ian Ellison * Times Literary Supplement *
Modernism at the Beach creates important inroads between modernist studies and environmental humanities. It offers a rich archive that documents beaches’ many, often contradictory faces and histories. Perhaps its greatest strength lies in the difficult, sometimes unresolved questions it raises about queer ecologies and environmental commons; such questions are a gift to scholars seeking new ground in these blossoming fields. -- Austin Lillywhite * ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction: The Beach Effect
1. Proust’s Leap
2. Intertidal Woolf
3. Carson’s Quiet Bower
4. McKay’s Dream Port
5. Tidewrack, Beckett to Sunde
Notes
Works Cited
Index
