Multimedia Modernism: Literature and the Anglo-American Avant-garde

by Julian Murphet

Multimedia Modernism explores the complex effects of a new media environment on avant-garde literary production in the early twentieth century. During this period, the likes of Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound and Louis Zukofsky wrote works which, in one way or another, attest to the immense effect that photography, cinematography, mechanical print technology and visual advertising had on the established arts. Re-reading modernism's technological origins through the lens of media theory, this innovative study proposes a serious new methodological approach to modernism in general. Examining a wide range of literature that includes Gertrude Stein's contributions to Camera Work, Louis Zukofsky's groundbreaking poem 'A' and Wyndham Lewis's celebrated Blast, this book embeds literary revolution within media evolution to show that literary criticism and media history have a lot to learn from each other.

232 pages, Hardcover

First published June 8, 2009

About the author

Julian Murphet is a Marxist literary scholar specialising in North American literary history and with interests in film studies, literary theory, and the uses and abuses of 'race'. He has written books on modern character, prison writing, William Faulkner, modernism, the literature of Los Angeles, Bret Easton Ellis, and the filmmaker Todd Solondz; and edited several scholarly collections on various topics.