Description
Book SynopsisViral Modernism reveals the literary and cultural impact of one of the deadliest plagues in history, the influenza pandemic of 19181919, bringing to light how it shaped canonical works of fiction and poetry. Elizabeth Outka shows how and why the contours of modernism shift when we account for the pandemic's hidden but widespread presence.
Trade ReviewIn her timely, revelatory book,
Viral Modernism, Elizabeth Outka argues that the wide-ranging, frightening effects of the pandemic described in these vivid letters to Eliot’s mother also shaped The Waste Land in ways that have been neglected. -- Mena Mitrano * Time Present *
Highly recommended. * Choice *
Viral Modernism is an infectious study that will warrant many returns. -- Sean Weidman * English Studies *
[An] absorbing, scrupulously historicized account of modernist literature in the context of the 1918–19 influenza pandemic. -- David James, University of Birmingham * Novel: A Forum on Fiction *
Viral Modernism might have been published just before the spread of COVID-19, but the viral atmosphere that Outka so skillfully examines captures, too, the present state of a world arrested by contagion. Thus, the book not only challenges what we talk about when we talk about modernism but also, perhaps most importantly, clues readers into how literary culture makes legible the logics and legacies of global catastrophic events, reminding us that even an outbreak on the scale of COVID-19 “can be hidden,” as Outka warns, “unless we learn to read for its presence." -- James Fitz Gerald * Modern Fiction Studies *
Elizabeth Outka answers a question that has hardly been asked, let alone answered: where is the flu in modernism? It is one of those books whose importance is written into its DNA. Adjusting our eyes so that we can see the shadowy presence of the pandemic, Outka gives us a new vision of modernism, vulnerable and embodied. Steeped in a rich and riveting archive,
Viral Modernism offers transformative insights into the motivation and meaning of modernist texts, attuning us to the troubling ways illness can disappear from our cultural memory. -- Sarah Cole, author of
Inventing Tomorrow: H. G. Wells and the Twentieth CenturyHow and why, asks Elizabeth Outka, have we missed “the viral tragedy within iconic modernist texts”? And what do we learn when we listen for it?
Viral Modernism resuscitates the buried stories of the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic in relation to modernist literary form. The voices that surface through the exquisite readings of this well-researched, well-argued study offer insight not only into the tragic experience of this devastating disease but also into how those affected use literary and cultural forms to make sense of that experience, hence into the nature of storytelling itself. -- Priscilla Wald, author of
Contagious: Cultures, Carriers, and the Outbreak NarrativeViral Modernism is an elegantly written, penetrating study of how the influenza pandemic of 1918–1919 shaped modernist literature and society, most notably in Clarissa’s illnesses in
Mrs. Dalloway; the burning thirst and drowning in
The Waste Land; and the influence of Yeats’s stricken, pregnant wife as he wrote “The Second Coming.” -- Stephen Kern, author of
The Culture of Time and Space, 1880-1918Viral Modernism navigates deftly between history and literature and presents transformative readings of some of the most canonical high modernist works. Along the way, Elizabeth Outka offers a moving and harrowing account of the challenges the influenza pandemic posed to those who lived through it. Readers will talk about this book with friends and family, and the field will never be able to ignore the pandemic again. An extraordinary achievement. -- Celia Marshik, author of
At the Mercy of Their Clothes: Modernism, the Middlebrow, and British Garment CultureExpertly-crafted and well-researched. Outka asks important questions informed by serious scholarship that would be helpful even without the context of recent global events; with them, Viral Modernism becomes essential reading. * Recherche Littéraire Literary Research *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
1. Introducing the Pandemic
Part I. Pandemic Realism: Making an Atmosphere Visible2. Untangling War and Plague: Willa Cather and Katherine Anne Porter
3. Domestic Pandemic: Thomas Wolfe and William Maxwell
Part II. Pandemic Modernism4. On Seeing Illness: Virginia Woolf’s
Mrs. Dalloway5. A Wasteland of Influenza: T. S. Eliot’s
The Waste Land6. Apocalyptic Pandemic: W. B. Yeats’s “The Second Coming”
Part III. Pandemic Cultures7. Spiritualism, Zombies, and the Return of the Dead
Coda: The Structure of Illness, the Shape of Loss
Notes
Bibliography
Index
