Title Reconstructing modernism : British literature, modern architecture, and the state / Ashley Maher

Edition First edition Published Oxford ; New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2020

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Description 1 online resource (ix, 259 pages) : illustrations Series Oxford Mid-Century Studies series Oxford mid-century studies. Summary Reconstructing Modernism establishes for the first time the centrality of modernist buildings and architectural periodicals to British mid-century literature. Drawing upon a wealth of previously unexplored architectural criticism by British authors, this book reveals how arguments about architecture led to innovations in literature, as well as to redesigns in the concept of modernism itself. 0While the city has long been a focus of literary modernist studies, architectural modernism has never had its due. Scholars usually characterize architectural modernism as a parallel modernism or even an incompatible modernism to literature. Giving special attention to dystopian classics Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four, this study argues that sustained attention to modern architecture shaped mid-century authors' political and aesthetic commitments. After many writers0deemed modernist architects to be agents for communism and other collectivist movements, they squared themselves-and literary modernist detachment and aesthetic autonomy-against the seemingly tyrannical utopianism of modern architecture; literary aesthetic qualities were reclaimed as political qualities. In this0way, Reconstructing Modernism redraws the boundaries of literary modernist studies: rather than simply adding to its canon, it argues that the responsibility for defining literary modernism for the mid-century public was shared by an incredible variety of authors-Edwardians, modernists, satirists, and even anti-modernists Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (viewed September 3, 2020) Subject British literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism Modernism (Literature) Architecture and literature Modern movement (Architecture) Architecture and literature British literature Modern movement (Architecture) Modernism (Literature) Genre/Form Electronic books Criticism, interpretation, etc. Form Electronic book ISBN 9780192548429 0192548425 9780192548436 0192548433

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