Aestheticism and Modernism

by Richard Danson Brown (Editor), Suman Gupta (Editor)

This textbook ranges from the early twentieth-century to the full array of modernisms emerging between the First and Second World Wars. The editors introduce twentieth-century debates around genre, form and content reflected in both literary and critical writing of the period, as well as differing accounts of the function of literature (aestheticist vs. didactic). They go on to examine debates around modernisms, and the various ways in which authors negotiated the departure of the modern from the past in terms of style, form, ideas and ideology.
This wide-ranging volume is not only ideal as the first part of a course on twentieth-century literature, but also as a companion to courses on modernist literature and culture.
Texts examined in detail
Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard , Mansfield's Short Stories , poetry of the 1930s, Gibbon's Sunset Song , Eliot's Prufrock , Brecht's Galileo , Woolf's Orlando , Okigbo's Selected Poems .

452 pages, Paperback

First published July 12, 2005

Reviews

[Tim Rideout · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part one of a two part series supporting my OU module focussed on twentieth century literature. Good material supporting a great course.

[Rachel Page · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the course textbook for an Open University course studying 20th Century literature. I found some of the chapters more interesting and readable than others, depending on my interests. The one on Katherine Manfields was painful.

[Richard Cubitt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for my degree.

[Nathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Text books aren't supposed to be fun I guess, so this will never hit a high mark, but it is a very good accompaniment to the set course books.