A Handbook of Modernism Studies

The fourth volume in a new and innovative series exploring literature through the variegated lenses of critical theory, this bold new collection of essays examines canonical modernist texts by making sense of the conceptual, philosophical, and theoretical issues that underpin them. Edited by a renowned commentator on modernist theory and literature, the book features contributions from leading academics who have engaged in detailed analysis both of individual texts, and their links with theory and theoreticians.

The handbook explores the deep affinity of leading theorists for specific modernist texts, unravelling the intellectual links between Adorno and Beckett, Derrida and Joyce, Foucault and Borges, and ?i?ek and Kafka, among others. It also attests to the penchant of modernist authors such as Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot and Fernando Pessoa for particular aspects of philosophical and theoretical discourse. This compelling examination of the philosophical confluence between modernism and literature will attract students and scholars not just of literature, but in many other disciplines.

Notes on Contributors vii

Introduction 1
Jean–Michel Rabaté

1 Hard and Soft Modernism: Politics as Theory 15
Peter Nicholls

2 Streams Beyond Consciousness: Stylistic Immediacy in the Modernist Novel 35
Vicki Mahaffey

3 Modernisms High and Low 55
Eric Bulson

4 Kafka, Modernism, and Literary Theory 75
Vivian Liska

5 Race: Tradition and Archive in the Harlem Renaissance 87
Jeremy Braddock

6 Empire, Imperialism, and Modernism 107
John Marx

7 Marxist Modernisms: From Jameson to Benjamin 123
Catherine Flynn

8 Reactionary Modernism 139
Robert L. Caserio

9 Transnationalism at the Departure Gate 157
Matthew Hart

10 From Ritual to the Archaic in Modernism: Frazer, Harrison, Freud, and the Persistence of Myth 173
Shanyn Fiske

11 Modernism, Orientalism, and East Asia 193
Christopher Bush

12 Translation Studies and Modernism 209
Steven G. Yao

13 Modernism, Mind, and Manuscripts 225
Dirk Van Hulle

14 Modernism and Visual Culture 239
Laura Marcus

15 More Kicks than Pricks: Modernist Body–Parts 255
Maud Ellmann

16 Materialities of Modernism: Objects, Matter, Things 281
Bill Brown

17 Glamour s Silhouette: Fashion, Fashun, and Modernism 297
Judith Brown

18 Otherness and Singularity: Ethical Modernism 313
Marian Eide

19 Phenomenology and Affect: Modernist Sulking 327
Sara Crangle

20 Queer Modernism 347
Benjamin Kahan

21 Cultural Capital and the Revolutions of Literary Modernity, from Bourdieu to Casanova 363
James F. English

22 Modernism and Cognitive Disability: A Genealogy 379
Joseph Valente

23 From Parody to the Event; from Affect to Freedom: Observations on the Feminine Sublime in Modernism 399
Ewa Plonowska Ziarek

24 Aesthetic Formalism, the Form of Artworks, and Formalist Criticism 415
Jonathan Loesberg

25 Rancière s Aesthetic Regime: Modernism, Politics, and the Logic of Excess 431
Molly Anne Rothenberg

Index 445

Jean–Michel Rabaté, professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Pennsylvania (USA) since 1992, is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and one of the editors of the Journal of Modern Literature. Co–founder and senior curator of the Slought Foundation in Philadelphia, he has authored or edited more than thirty–five volumes on modernism, psychoanalysis, contemporary art, and philosophy. Recent books include Crimes of the Future (2014), The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and Psychoanalysis  (2014), and the edited volume 1922: Literature, Culture and Politics (2015).

An invaluable resource for literary theorists and modernism scholars Highly recommended.  Choice

"A handbook, yes, but so much more: an inspiriting demonstration of the divergent, energetic, and innovative approaches that are transforming our sense of how modernism was, is, and one day might be understood. Indispensable, whatever your level of engagement with modernist studies." Maria DiBattista, Princeton University

Jean–Michel Rabaté s expertly assembled Handbook of Modernist Studies rereads Modernist literary texts through the lens of the most recent and up–to–date Continental theory. The 25 essays included here are as comprehensive and authoritative as they are sophisticated. Marjorie Perloff

This superb collection of new essays by leading figures in the field provides the reader with a satisfyingly complete yet also excitingly cutting–edge introduction to the study of Modernism in our time ... Indispensible for both experts and newcomers to the field. Sianne Ngai, Stanford University