The Cambridge companion to European modernism

About This Book

"Modernism arose in a period of accelerating globalization in the late nineteenth century. Modernist writers and artists, while often loyal to their country in times of war, aimed to rise above the national and ideological conflicts of the early twentieth century in service to a cosmopolitan ideal. This Companion explores the international aspects of literary modernism by mapping the history of the movement across Europe and within each country. The essays place the various literary traditions within a social and historical context and set out recent critical debates. Particular attention is given to the urban centers in which modernism developed - from Dublin to Zürich, Barcelona to Warsaw - and to the movements of modernists across national borders. A broad, accessible account of European modernism, this Companion explores what this cosmopolitan movement can teach us about life as a citizen of Europe and of the world"-- "The term modernism, central to English-language criticism of early twentieth-century literature at least since Laura Riding and Robert Graves published their Survey of Modernist Poetry in 1927, has continually widened in scope. Contemporary scholars often describe modernism, understood as a cosmopolitan movement in literature and the arts reflecting a crisis of representation, as having arisen in Europe in the middle of the nineteenth century and developing up to, and even after, the Second World War. Even so classic and wide-ranging an earlier account as the collection that Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane edited in 1976, Modernism: A Guide to European Literature, 1890-1930, today seems strangely limited in its historical timeframe. Modernism now seems to be a movement whose roots go back well over a century and whose effects are still being felt today"--