While literary modernism is often associated with Euro-American metropolises such as London, Paris or New York, this book considers the place of the colonial city in modernist fiction. From the streets of Dublin to the shop-houses of Singapore, and from the botanical gardens of Bombay to the suburbs of Suva, the monumental landscapes of British colonial cities aimed to reinforce empire's universalising claims, yet these spaces also contradicted and resisted the impositions of an idealised English culture. Inspired by the uneven landscapes of the urban British empire, a group of twentieth-century writers transformed the visual incongruities and anachronisms on display in the city streets into sources of critique and formal innovation. Showing how these writers responded to empire's metrocolonial complexities and built legacies, Modernism in the Metrocolony traces an alternative, peripheral history of the modernist city.

This book is first to historicise and theorise the significance of the early twentieth-century little art colony as a uniquely modern social formation within a global network of modernist activity and production.

This title historicises and theorises the significance of the early twentieth-century little art colony as a uniquely modern social formation within a global network of modernist activity and production.

Essays exploring interrelated strands of material ecologies, past and present British politics, and the act of writing, through a rich variety of case studies.Much as the complexities of climate change and the Anthropocene have queried the limits and exclusions of literary representation, so, too, have the challenges recently presented by climate activism and intersectional environmentalism, animal rights, and even the power of material forms, such as oil, plastic, and heavy metals. Social and protest movements have revived the question of whether there can be such a thing as an activist ecocriticism: can such an approach only concern itself with consciousness, or might it politicise literary criticism in a new way? Attempting to respond, this volume coalesces around three interrelated strands: material ecologies, past and present British politics, and the act of writing itself. Contributors consider the ways in which literary form has foregrounded the complexities of both matter (in essays on water, sugar, and land) and political economics (from empire and nationalism to environmental justice movements and local and regional communities). The volume asks how life writing, nature writing, creative nonfiction, and autobiography - although genres entrenched in capitalist political realities - can also confront these by reinserting personal experience. Can we bring a more sustainable planet into being by focusing on those literary forms which have the ability to imagine the conditions and systems needed to do so? and land) and political economics (from empire and nationalism to environmental justice movements and local and regional communities). The volume asks how life writing, nature writing, creative nonfiction, and autobiography - although genres entrenched in capitalist political realities - can also confront these by reinserting personal experience. Can we bring a more sustainable planet into being by focusing on those literary forms which have the ability to imagine the conditions and systems needed to do so? and land) and political economics (from empire and nationalism to environmental justice movements and local and regional communities). The volume asks how life writing, nature writing, creative nonfiction, and autobiography - although genres entrenched in capitalist political realities - can also confront these by reinserting personal experience. Can we bring a more sustainable planet into being by focusing on those literary forms which have the ability to imagine the conditions and systems needed to do so? and land) and political economics (from empire and nationalism to environmental justice movements and local and regional communities). The volume asks how life writing, nature writing, creative nonfiction, and autobiography - although genres entrenched in capitalist political realities - can also confront these by reinserting personal experience. Can we bring a more sustainable planet into being by focusing on those literary forms which have the ability to imagine the conditions and systems needed to do so?o?

What was Modernism, and why does it still matter? The term itself first gained currency in the 1930s, describing a kind of art that already may have peaked, some would say as early as 1922. Whatever its ups and downs in its own time, as the novelist Julian Barnes claims in one of the twenty essays commissioned for the present volume, Modernism never vanished. It remains our immovable feast. Modernism was international in scope; it left its mark on all genres, from literature and painting to opera, dance, and architecture; it pushed the boundaries of what was artistically possible and aesthetically important; and finally, for all its destructive urges which it shared with the century itself, it was also celebrative. This book is a response to the exhibition of the same name that opened at the Harry Ransom Center in October 2003. It includes original essays by such noted writers and artists as Russell Banks, Anita Desai, David Douglas Duncan, Elizabeth Hardwick, and Penelope Lively, which offer fresh perspectives on important Modernist figures, including William Gaddis, Ezra Pound, William Faulkner, E. M. Forster, Paul Robeson, Virginia Woolf, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Le Corbusier. In addition, essays by leading scholars in literature and art history focus on specific artifacts included in the exhibit. As the Center's Director, Thomas F. Staley, puts it in the Foreword, "Ours is an attempt not of definition but of discovery and rediscovery." Book and exhibition permit both reader and viewer to experience the textures, structures, and resonances which made the first part of the twentieth century so innovative that its art is still virtually synonymous with what "newness" means.

This volume explores the interface between modernism and geography in a range of writers, texts and artists across the 20th century.