Literature, Modernism and Myth: Belief and Responsibility in the Twentieth Century

ISBN-13: 9780521580168 / Angielski / Twarda / 1997 / 272 str.

Michael Bell

Opis

Modernist literature attempted to discover through myth an underlying metaphysic to an increasingly fragmented world. In Literature, Modernism and Myth, Michael Bell examines the relationship among myth, modernism and postmodernism. Bell shows how modernists used myth to emphasize the contingency of all values. This anti-foundational element, Bell claims, enables myth to act as a corrective to the political claims of ideological critique. He shows how postmodern concerns with political and social responsibility have in fact been inherited from modernism.

Recenzje

'Bell manages to successfully place these traditions within a lively dialogue of modern Britain and America, whilst also laying to rest the fashionable criticisms about myths.' Anglia Newspaper for English Philology

Spis treści

Introduction; Part I: 1. Myth in the age of the world view; Part II: 2. Varieties of modernist mythopoeia; 3. Countercases: T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound; 4. The politics of modernist mythopoeia; Part III: 5. The break-up of modernist mythopoeia; 6. Living with myth: Cervantes and the new world; 7. Living without myth: deconstructing the old world; Part IV: Conclusion: ideology, myth and criticism; Notes; Select bibliography; Index.