Literature and Culture Handbooks are an innovative series of guides to major periods, topics and authors in British and American literature and culture. Designed to provide a comprehensive, one-stop resource for literature students, each handbook provides the essential information and guidance needed from the beginning of a course through to developing more advanced knowledge and skills. Written in clear language by leading academics, they provide an indispensable introduction to key topics, including:
• Introduction to authors, texts, historical and cultural contexts
• Guides to key critics, concepts and topics
• An overview of major critical approaches, changes in the canon and directions of current and future research
• Case studies in reading literary and critical texts
• Annotated bibliography (including websites), timeline, glossary of critical terms.
The Modernism Handbook is an invaluable introduction edited by Philip tew and Alex Murray to British Modernism as a literary movement.
"This is the best guide to the Scylla and Charybdis of Modernism; the quickest and easiest way of navigating the cultural historical currents, and the surest means of edging along the critical and theoretical reefs that so many other textbooks have foundered on." - Dr Rod Mengham, University of Cambridge, UK
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[Negative Review DO NOT USE] "This collection seeks to introduce students to literary and cultural modernism and to current trends in modernist studies. Unfortunately, the book does not link these aims in a compelling way. On the one hand, it considers authors, texts, and terms in long-established ways: Modernism is a response to the failed, shattered, or traumatic experiences of war, industrialization, or urbanization and a self-conscious rupture with the past that scholars must themselves be self-conscious about. On the other hand, it surveys recent scholarship in the field, addressing feminist, queer, and postcolonial readings but ultimately emphasizes historicist work on material culture of modernism... But the collection fails to answer the crucial question of how to integrate these secondary sources with the teaching of primary texts, around which most undergraduate courses remain organized. It is of little use, therefore, to faculty seeking to teach the most recent developments in the field. Who, then, is this book for? It is too professionalized to serve as an introduction for most undergraduate courses and too simplistic for most graduate students. For these reasons, and because of the careless editing (misspellings, solecisms, and other infelicies abound), the answer is, regrettably, no one. Summing up: Not recommended." —D. Stuber, Choice, April 2010
(CHOICE )
"The books in this series of Literature and Culture Handbooks are aimed primarily at undergraduate students which aim of acting as both a guide and a reference text reflecting the advances in academic studies."
The Use of English, Spring 2010
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[Negative Review DO NOT USE] “This collection seeks to introduce students to literary and cultural modernism and to current trends in modernist studies. Unfortunately, the book does not link these aims in a compelling way. On the one hand, it considers authors, texts, and terms in long-established ways: Modernism is a response to the failed, shattered, or traumatic experiences of war, industrialization, or urbanization and a self-conscious rupture with the past that scholars must themselves be self-conscious about. On the other hand, it surveys recent scholarship in the field, addressing feminist, queer, and postcolonial readings but ultimately emphasizes historicist work on material culture of modernism… But the collection fails to answer the crucial question of how to integrate these secondary sources with the teaching of primary texts, around which most undergraduate courses remain organized. It is of little use, therefore, to faculty seeking to teach the most recent developments in the field. Who, then, is this book for? It is too professionalized to serve as an introduction for most undergraduate courses and too simplistic for most graduate students. For these reasons, and because of the careless editing (misspellings, solecisms, and other infelicies abound), the answer is, regrettably, no one. Summing up: Not recommended.” –D. Stuber, Choice, April 2010
(CHOICE )
The book uses a number of aids- from boxes highlighting important concepts or authors, to neat summaries of chapters, to a detailed glossary of terms and concepts, to an excellent annotated bibliography- to help students coming to modernism for the first time gain a foothold in what is an incredibly large field of study. It is an excellent introduction to what is a nebulous and ungainly topic. (, )
About the Author
Philip Tew is Professor of English (Post-1900 Literature) at Brunel University, UK, Director of Brunel's Centre for Contemporary Writing and Director of the UK Network for Modern Fiction Studies.
Alex Murray is Lecturer in Twentieth-Century Literature at the University of Exeter. He is also founding editor, with Matt Sharpe and Jon Roffe of Parrhesia: A Journal of Critical Philosophy.
