Modernism and the Post-Colonial: Literature and Empire 1885-1930

(Hardback)

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This book considers the shifts in aesthetic representation over the period 1885-1930 that coincide both with the rise of literary Modernism and imperialism's high point. If it is no coincidence that the rise of the novel accompanied the expansion of empire in the eighteenth-century, then the historical conditions of fiction as the empire waned are equally pertinent. Peter Childs argues that modernist literary writing should be read in terms of its response and relationship to events overseas and that it should be seen as moving towards an emergent post-colonialism instead of struggling with a residual colonial past. Beginning by offering an analysis of the generational and gender conflict that spans art and empire in the period, Childs moves on to examine modernism's expression of a crisis of belief in relation to subjectivity, space, and time. Finally, he investigatesthe war as a turning point in both colonial relations and aesthetic experimentation. Each of the core chapters focuses on one key writer and discuss a range of others, including: Conrad, Lawrence, Kipling, Eliot, Woolf, Joyce, Conan Doyle and Haggard.

Reviews

"In this engagingly readable book T E Lawrence rubs shoulders with Wagner and both are seen as being on the cusp between imperial confidence and the 'nervous condition' of modernism. Peter Childs' subtle reading of specific texts is informed by a probing and wide-ranging analysis of the late colonial period and its anxieties, not just about control but about the exercise of power and about conceptual questions relating to time and mapping. The range of literary works itself provides the reader with a new map of the intersection between modernism and the post-colonial." Professor Angela Smith (Emeritus), Department of English Studies, University of Stirling, UK

Author Bio

Peter Childs is Pro-Vice-Chancellor Research & Scholarship and Professor of Modern & Contemporary English Literature, Newman University, UK. He has published widely on twentieth and twenty-first century fiction.