Modernist Exoskeleton

"Focusing on the writing of Wyndham Lewis, D. H. Lawrence, H.D. and Samuel Beckett, this book uncovers a shared fascination with the aesthetic possibilities of the insect body - its adaptive powers, distinct stages of growth and swarming formations."--

Argues for the importance of insects to modernism's formal innovationsUses the idea of the insect as a key to modernist writers' engagement with questions of politics, psychology, life, and literary formProvides in-depth analysis of lesser-known modernist narratives, such as H.D.'s Asphodel and Lewis's Snooty Baronet, as well as new readings of canonical texts - including D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover and Samuel Beckett's TrilogyExplores the influence of popular scientific writing on modernist aestheticsReveals the attentiveness of modernist writers to nonhuman life, thus forging new lines of connection between modernism and literary animal studiesFocusing on the writing of Wyndham Lewis, D. H. Lawrence, H.D. and Samuel Beckett, this book uncovers a shared fascination with the aesthetic possibilities of the insect body - its adaptive powers, distinct stages of growth and swarming formations. Through a series of close readings, it proposes that the figure of the exoskeleton, which functions both as a protective outer layer and as a site of encounter, can enhance our understanding of modernism's engagement with nonhuman life, as well as its questioning of the boundaries of the human.

Argues that the Bloomsbury group's fascination with beasts was integral to their exploration of imperialism, race, gender, sexuality and technology.

Explores abstraction as a keyword in aesthetic modernism and in critical thinking since Marx

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.

Brings ideas and animals together to shed new light on modernist magazine culture Tests the concept of 'primordial' modernism as a tributary of primitivism, Jungian thought, and fraught nationalismsProvides readings of Eugene Jolas's creative and critical works that place him centre-stage in modernist studiesMoves between unpublished archival material, reception studies, and readings of overlooked authorsConsiders a wide range of modernist authors and artists as befitting to such a rich documentTouches on contemporary scientific discourse as an aspect of animal studiesThis adventurous study focuses on experimental animal writing in the major interwar journal transition (1927-1938), which contains a striking recurrence of metaphors around the most basic forms of life. Amoebas, fish, lizards, birds - some of the 'lowest' and 'oldest' creatures on earth often emerge at the very places authors seek expressions for the 'newest' and the 'highest' in art. Discussing works by James Joyce, Henry Miller, Gottfried Benn, Eugene Jolas, Kay Boyle, Bryher, Paul luard and more, Cathryn Setz investigates this paradox and provides a new understanding of transition's contribution to twentieth-century periodical culture.

Explores the 'still life spirit' in modern painting, prose, dance, sculpture and poetryChallenges the conventional positioning of still life a 'minor' genre in art historyProposes a radical alternative to narratives of modernism that privilege speed and motion by revealing forms of stillness and still life at the heart of modern literature and visual cultureProvides the first study of still life to consider the genre across modern literature, visual cultures and danceUncovers connections and cultural exchange between networks of European and American artists including the Bloomsbury Group and Wallace StevensThe late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have been characterised as the 'age of speed' but they also witnessed a reanimation of still life across different art forms. This book takes an original approach to still life in modern literature and the visual arts by examining the potential for movement and transformation in the idea of stillness and the ordinary. It ranges widely in its material, taking Czanne and literary responses to his still life painting as its point of departure. It investigates constellations of writers, visual artists and dancers including D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, David Jones, Winifred Nicholson, Wallace Stevens, and lesser-known figures including Charles Mauron and Margaret Morris. Claudia Tobin reveals that at the heart of modern art were forms of stillness that were intimately bound up with movement: the still life emerges charged with animation, vibration and rhythm; an unstable medium, unexpectedly vital and well suited to the expression of modern concerns.

<h4>Explores the relation between humility and humiliation in the works of T. S. Eliot and Samuel Beckett</h4>

<ul><li>Offers the first book-length comparative study of T. S. Eliot and Samuel Beckett</li>
<li>Develops a literary theory of humility and humiliation – concepts whose definitions have largely been determined by philosophy and theology</li>
<li>Explores the relation between negative affect, ethics and aesthetics</li></ul>

<p>Humility and humiliation have an awkward, often unacknowledged intimacy. Humility may be a queenly, cardinal or monkish virtue, while humiliation points to an affective state at the extreme end of shame. Yet a shared etymology links the words to lowliness and, further down, to the earth. As this study suggests, like the terms in question, T. S. Eliot and Samuel Beckett share an imperfect likeness. Between them is a common interest in states of abjection, shame and suffering – and possible responses to such states. Tracing the relation between negative affect, ethics, and aesthetics, <i>Eliot and Beckett’s Low Modernism</i> demonstrates how these two major modernists recuperate the affinity between humility and humiliation – concepts whose definitions have largely been determined by philosophy and theology.</p>