Modernism: A Guide to European Literature 1890-1930 (Penguin Literary Criticism) [Paperback]

Malcolm Bradbury (Editor), James McFarlane (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 29, 1978 | Series: Penguin Literary Criticism

The Modern movement in the arts transformed consciousness and artistic form just as the energies of modernity--scientific, technological, philosophical, political--transformed for ever the nature, the speed, the sensation of human life, ' write the editors in their new Preface. This now classic survey explores the ideas, the groupings and the social tensions that shaped this transformation.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Malcolm Bradbury is a novelist, critic, television dramatist and Emeritus Professor of American Studies at the University of East Anglia. He is author of the novels Eating People is Wrong (1959); Stepping Westward (1965); The History Man (1975); which won the Royal Society of Literature Heinemann Prize and was adapted as a famous television series; Rates of Exchange (1983) which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize; Cuts: A Very Short Novel (1987), also televised; and Doctor Criminale (1992). His critical works include The Modern American Novel (1984; revised edition, 1992); No, Not Bloomsbury (essays, 1987); The Modern world: Ten Great Writers (1988); From Puritanism to Post-modernism: A History of American Literature (with Richard Ruland, 1991) He is the author of a collection of seven stories and nine parodies, entitled Who Do You Think You Are? (1976), and of several works of humour and satire, including Why Come to Slaka? (1986), Unsent Letters (1988; revised edition, 1995) and Mensonge (1987). Many of his books are published by Penguin. In addition, he has written many television plays and the television 'novel' The Gravy Train and The Gravy Train Goes East. He has adapted several television series, including Tom Sharpe's Porterhouse Blue, Kinglsey Amis's The Green Man and Stella Gibbon's' Cold Comfort Farm, now a feature film.

Malcolm Bradbury lives in Norwich, travels good deal, and in 1991 he was awarded the CBE.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Paperback: 688 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (June 29, 1978)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140138323
• ISBN-13: 978-0140138320
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #278,446 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An important Text for an important time, March 1, 2000

By 

A Student of Literature (Liberty, MO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Modernism: A Guide to European Literature 1890-1930 (Penguin Literary Criticism) (Paperback)

This collection of critical essays does much to clarify the readers understanding and enhance one's appreciation of the period that produced such great works as Ulysses and The Waste Land. By laying a ground work that focuses on historical and geographical scholarship and the individual movements that make up Modernism the editors have succeeded in portraying Modernism in all of its diversity. This book is essential to those who want a good, non-reductive introduction a great literary movement.

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Modernism brilliantly revisited., February 18, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Modernism: A Guide to European Literature 1890-1930 (Penguin Literary Criticism) (Paperback)

If one sums up Calinescu's book on modernity and this very complete anthology, one has probably the best combination to undertand this movement. Bradbury and McFarlane select some of the best examples I have seen for the topic and give a very clear perspective on the topic. Readers of some of the most important authors of the history of literature, like Joyce or Baudelaire, will find a clear contextualization based not on contemporary interpretations but by the critics of the time.