Green Modernism

One of the first studies to explore the relationship between environmental criticism and British modernism, Green Modernism explores the cultural function of nature in the modernist novel between 1900 and 1930. This theoretically engaged, historically informed book brings new materialist insights to novels by Conrad, Ford, Lawrence, and Butts.

One of the first studies to explore the relationship between environmental criticism and British modernism, Green Modernism explores the cultural function of nature in the modernist novel between 1900 and 1930. This theoretically engaged, historically informed book brings new materialist insights to novels by Conrad, Ford, Lawrence, and Butts.

Modernism in the Green traces a trans-Atlantic modernist fascination with the creation, use, and representation of the modern green. From the verdant public commons in the heart of cities to the lookout points on mountains in national parks, planned green spaces serve as felicitous stages for the performance of modernism. In its focus on designed and public green zones,Modernism in the Green offers a new perspective on modernism’s overlapping investments in the arts, politics, urbanism, race, class, gender, and the nature-culture divide. This collection of essays is the first to explore the prominent and diverse ways greens materialize in modern literature and culture, along with the manner in which modernists represented them. This volume presents the idea of "the green" as a point of exploration, as our contributors analyze social-organic spaces ranging from public parks to roadways and refuse piles. Like the term "green," one that evokes both more-than-human natural zones and crafted public meeting places, these chapters uncover the social and spatial intersection of nature and culture in the very architecture of parks, gardens, buildings, highways, and dumps. This book argues that such greens facilitate modernists’ exploration of how nature can manifest in an era of increasing urbanization and mechanization and what identities and communities the green now enables or prevents.

Although Henry Green has been recognised by James Wood, David Lodge and John Updike as one of the most innovative writers of his time, his significant achievement remains largely neglected. Henry Green at the Limits of Modernism provides a theoretically sophisticated and historically nuanced reading of Green's novels and makes the case for Green's importance in reconsiderations of modernism, late modernism and post-war realism. This work is the most ambitious reassessment of Green's oeuvre to date and thus critical reading for scholars interested in modernism, late modernism, and the evolution of British post-war fiction. Arguing against the predominant view of Green's fiction as an autonomous literary construction, the work connects Green to a number of social and literary contexts, resulting in fresh readings of his novels and also a greater accessibility to an author long considered 'oblique' and 'elusive'. With significant investigations of Green's connection to his literary generation, his multifaceted and formally innovative handling of social class, his negotiations of narrative authority and authorship, and the importance of disability studies to understanding Green's fiction, this study charts the complex trajectories of Green's fiction against both social and literary contexts. The work also moves beyond the narrow confines of British literature to explore Green's connections to broader trends in European literature.

Modernism in the Green traces a trans-Atlantic modernist fascination with the creation, use, and representation of the modern green. From the verdant public commons in the heart of cities to the lookout points on mountains in national parks, planned green spaces serve as felicitous stages for the performance of modernism. In its focus on designed and public green zones, Modernism in the Green offers a new perspective on modernism's overlapping investments in the arts, politics, urbanism, race, class, gender, and the nature-culture divide. This collection of essays is the first to explore the prominent and diverse ways greens materialize in modern literature and culture, along with the manner in which modernists represented them. This volume presents the idea of "the green" as a point of exploration, as our contributors analyze social-organic spaces ranging from public parks to roadways and refuse piles. Like the term "green," one that evokes both more-than-human natural zones and crafted public meeting places, these chapters uncover the social and spatial intersection of nature and culture in the very architecture of parks, gardens, buildings, highways, and dumps. This book argues that such greens facilitate modernists' exploration of how nature can manifest in an era of increasing urbanization and mechanization and what identities and communities the green now enables or prevents.

In drawing together contributions from leading and emerging scholars from across the UK and America, Eco-Modernism offers a diverse range of environmental and ecological interpretations of modernist texts and illustrates that ecocriticism can offer fresh and provocative ways of understanding literary modernism.

Modernism and the Anthropocene explores twentieth-century literature as it engages with the non-human world across a range of contexts. From familiar modernist works by D.H. Lawrence and Hart Crane to still-emergent genres like comics and speculative fiction, this volume tackles a series of related questions regarding how best to understand humanity’s increasing domination of the natural world.

A fascinating cross-section of current research in modernist art history, at the cutting edge of contemporary scholarship, with essays by pupils of the renowned scholar Professor Christopher Green.