English Literature
Modernism and
Modernism and Postmodernism andrzej gasiorek and peter boxall
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This chapter deals with work published in the field of modernism and postmodernism in 2006 and is divided into two sections: 1. Modernism; 2. Postmodernism.
1. Modernism
In the course of the last three years, our reading of published work on modernism and postmodernism has thrown up various recurring issues. It would be exaggerating the case to suggest that there is a homogeneity of concerns here, or that some kind of critical ‘dominant’ has emerged during this short period, but it’s clear that certain preoccupations and methodological/theoretical approaches have greater currency than others. In this, our final year of reviewing these linked research fields, we want not only to focus on the year’s work in 2006 but also to highlight what seem to us to have been the key over-riding concerns to have emerged during the last three years. It goes without saying that our remarks aren’t intended to be definitive; we make no pretence to have covered everything that’s been published (and of course it should be noted that the year’s work covers monographs, not articles in academic journals) but we hope to have identified at least some of the most absorbing trends. Two really obvious features of recent research in the field of modernism stand out: the first is its concern with material practices; the second is its commitment to seeing modernism as part of a wide discursive field. These two preoccupations frequently go together and inform each other. The days in which modernism was viewed primarily in aesthetic terms (the legacy of the New Critics and Scrutineers looming large) really are long gone. Now, everybody is super-keen to show how much they have learned from cultural studies, the New Historicism, and post-structuralism(s), though it’s the first two of these approaches that have had far the greatest
Modernism and Postmodernism andrzej gasiorek and peter boxall
Downloaded from http://ywcct.oxfordjournals.org/ at Social Science Baha on June 1, 2012
3
This chapter deals with work published in the field of modernism and postmodernism in 2006 and is divided into two sections: 1. Modernism; 2. Postmodernism.
1. Modernism
In the course of the last three years, our reading of published work on modernism and postmodernism has thrown up various recurring issues. It would be exaggerating the case to suggest that there is a homogeneity of concerns here, or that some kind of critical ‘dominant’ has emerged during this short period, but it’s clear that certain preoccupations and methodological/theoretical approaches have greater currency than others. In this, our final year of reviewing these linked research fields, we want not only to focus on the year’s work in 2006 but also to highlight what seem to us to have been the key over-riding concerns to have emerged during the last three years. It goes without saying that our remarks aren’t intended to be definitive; we make no pretence to have covered everything that’s been published (and of course it should be noted that the year’s work covers monographs, not articles in academic journals) but we hope to have identified at least some of the most absorbing trends. Two really obvious features of recent research in the field of modernism stand out: the first is its concern with material practices; the second is its commitment to seeing modernism as part of a wide discursive field. These two preoccupations frequently go together and inform each other. The days in which modernism was viewed primarily in aesthetic terms (the legacy of the New Critics and Scrutineers looming large) really are long gone. Now, everybody is super-keen to show how much they have learned from cultural studies, the New Historicism, and post-structuralism(s), though it’s the first two of these approaches that have had far the greatest
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