Gregory F. Tague

The Origins of English Literary Modernism, 1870 - 1914 Gregory F. Tague

The aim of this work is to focus on the non-dramatic works of the early period of modernism in England with an emphasis on the origins and development of key writers and poets. Other such studies date to the mid1980s (Michael Levenson, Sanford Schwartz, and Stan Smith, e.g.) and tend to lean heavily toward intellectual history or poetics. This work strives to include a broad mix of thought as to the issue and the purpose of modernism including cultural anthropology, mythology, impressionism and the use of architectural space, with some attention to publishing (the development of the English short story, emergence of literary magazines, and use of literary reviews in creating a 'public' for new writing). Also, as opposed the edited collections such as Shiach or Whitworth research is not confined to a single genre nor strays from the focus of literary as opposed to other modern movements then in creation. Vital currents of modernism such as literary feminism, secular humanism/Darwinism and place and placelessness are also discussed. The writers and poets discussed include Pound, Eliot, Wyndam Lewis, T. E. Hulme, Hardy, F. M.
Ford, Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, Walter Pater, 'Michael Field', Henry James, Oscar Wilde and E. M. Forster.