Description
Book SynopsisIn The Medieval Presence in the Modernist Aesthetic: Unattended Moments, editors Simone Celine Marshall and Carole M. Cusack have brought together essays on literary Modernism that uncover medieval themes and tropes that have previously been “unattended”, that is, neglected or ignored. A historical span of a century is covered, from musical modernist Richard Wagner’s final opera Parsifal (1882) to Russell Hoban’s speculative fiction Riddley Walker (1980), and themes of Arthurian literature, scholastic philosophy, Irish legends, classical philology, dream theory, Orthodox theology and textual exegesis are brought into conversation with key Modernist writers, including T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Samuel Beckett, Marcel Proust, W. B. Yeats, Evelyn Waugh and Eugene Ionesco. These scholarly investigations are original, illuminating, and often delightful.
Trade Review"Cusack and Marshall’s collection is a very useful one that will help provide scholarly discussion on the topic of modernism by reinforcing the idea that modernist aesthetics reach just as much into the ancient past as they do into the future." - Kristen Marangoni, Tulsa Community College, in: Literature & Aesthetics 19 (1), 2019
Table of ContentsForeword Notes on Contributors Introduction Simone Celine Marshall and Carole M. Cusack Wagner's Parsifal: Christianity, Celibacy, and Medieval Brotherhood as Ideal in Modernity Carole M. Cusack Fergus Mac Róich: Yeats' Damaged Mystic Joseph A. Mendes Ezra Pound's Medieval Classicism: The Spirit of Romance and the Debt to Philology Jonathan Ullyot Marcel Proust on Erotic Dreams and Oneiric Knowledge Gro Bjørnerud Mo The Aristotelian Crescent: Medieval Arabic Philosophy in the Poetics of Ezra Pound Mark Byron Between the "Machinery of Transcendence" and the "Machinery of War": The Unattended Moments of Eugene Ionesco Octavian Saiu "Melancholy Matters": Robert Burton and Samuel Beckett Rina Kim Whoroscope: Samuel Beckett's Medieval Machine Holly Phillips Lancelot and Guinevere in the Inter-War Period: The Medievalisms of Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust and Ezra Pound's Canto vi Anna Czarnowus Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker: The Eusa Story and Other Blipful Figgers Chris Ackerley Index
