Italian Futurism and the Development of English Literary Modernism
Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
Robyn Jakeman is an Honorary Research Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London, UK.This superb new account of Futurism traces the impact of the avant-garde Italian movement upon Anglophone modernism. In a series of richly researched chapters on Harold Monro, Wyndham Lewis, and Mina Loy, the book provides the most comprehensive cultural history of Futurism in Britain yet, demonstrating how many writers welcomed the Futurist desire to bridge the divide between art and life as a counter to British national decline and decadence in art. The book benefits from extensive research into archives and periodicals to bring some brilliant new insights into how Futurism was received. This is a book that will thoroughly revise our understanding of Futurism and of modernism in Britain.
- Andrew Thacker, Professor of English Literature, Nottingham Trent University, UK,
Revisiting the place of Italian Futurism in English literary modernism, this book draws on a range of overlooked historical and archival sources to reassess how English writers engaged with Futurist ideas. It suggests that Futurism offered a compelling response to a cultural tension that had emerged in the late nineteenth century—the growing separation between art and life—and considers how English modernists adapted aspects of Futurist thought in order to navigate and reshape fin-de-siècle cultural discourses.
It begins with an analysis of Italian Futurism’s transnational affiliations, its position in the European cultural field, and a reassessment of its reception in England, and goes on to re-evaluate three key modernist figures: the Poetry Bookshop proprietor and editor Harold Monro; the Vorticist impresario Wyndham Lewis; and the poet and artist Mina Loy. In doing so, this study not only offers an expanded account of the Futurist movement in England and Anglophone contexts, but also contributes to ongoing efforts to develop a more interconnected and nuanced understanding of early modernist historiography.
List of Illustrations
Series Editors’ Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 . An Imagined Community: Futurism in England
2 .‘The Beautiful Future’: Harold Monro, Poetry and Drama, and Futurism
3. ‘A Futurism of Place’: Wyndham Lewis’s Vorticism between Aestheticism and Futurism
4. ‘The Pseudo Futurist’: Mina Loy, Futurist Intuition, and symbolic capital
Coda
Bibliography
Index
Historicizing Modernism challenges traditional literary interpretations by taking an empirical approach to modernist writing: a direct response to new documentary sources made available over the last decade.
Informed by archival research, and working beyond the usual European/American avant-garde 1900-1945 parameters the series reassesses established images of modernist writers by developing fresh views of intellectual backgrounds and working methods.
Series Editors: Matthew Feldman and Erik Tonning
Associate Editor: Natasha Periyan, Lecturer in Literature, King’s College London, UK
Editorial Board:
Professor Chris Ackerley, Department of English, University of Otago, New Zealand;
Professor Ron Bush, St. John’s College, University of Oxford, UK;
Dr Finn Fordham, Department of English, Royal Holloway, UK;
Professor Steven Matthews, Department of English, University of Reading, UK;
Dr Mark Nixon, Department of English, University of Reading, UK;
Professor Janet Wilson, University of Northampton, UK;
Santanu Das, University of Oxford, UK;
Nan Zhang, The University of Hong Kong;
Kevin Andrew Riordan, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore