Modernism and empire (Writing and British coloniality, 1890-1940)

This is the first book to explore the relationship between literary modernism and the British Empire. Contributors look at works from the traditional modernist canon as well as extending the range of work addresses – particularly emphasising texts from the Empire. A key issue raised is whether modernism sprang from a crisis in the colonial system, which it sought to extend, or whether the modern movement was a more sophisticated form of cultural imperialism. The chapters in Modernism and empire show the importance of empire to modernism.

Patrick Williams theorises modernism and empire; Rod Edmond discusses theories of degeneration in imperial and modernist discourse; Helen Carr examines Imagism and empire; Elleke Boehmer compares Leonard Woolf and Yeats; Janet Montefiore writes on Kipling and Orwell, C.L. Innes explores Yeats, Joyce and their implied audiences; Maire Ni Fhlathuin writes on Patrick Pearse and modernism; John Nash considers newspapers, imperialism and Ulysses; Howard J. Booth addresses D.H. Lawrence and otherness; Nigel Rigby discusses Sylvia Townsend Warner and sexuality in the Pacific; Mark Williams explores Mansfield and Maori culture; Abdulrazak Gurnah looks at Karen Blixen, Elspeth Huxley and settler writing; and Bill Ashcroft and John Salter take an inter-disciplinary approach to Australia and ‘Modernism’s Empire’.