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A study of the twentieth-century transatlantic literary lecture tour, with a focus on the role that this circuit played in the formation of transatlantic modernism by following a diverse group of authors: Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats, Rabindranath Tagore, Gertrude Stein, and W. H. Auden.
List of contents
- Introduction: Modernism, On the Circuit
- 1: Curiosity: Oscar Wilde, P.T. Barnum, and the Culture of Self-Improvement
- 2: Diplomat: W.B. Yeats and the Voice of Ireland
- 3: Guru: Rabindranath Tagore's Political Spirit
- 4: Documentarian: Touring the Great Depression with Gertrude Stein
- 5: Correspondent: Speech and Allegory in W.H. Auden's World War II Lectures
- Coda: The End of the Tour
About the author
Robert Volpicelli is an Assistant Professor of English at Randolph-Macon College where he specializes in transnational modernisms and modern poetry. His essays on modernist literature and culture have appeared in such journals as Textual Practice, NOVEL, and Twentieth-Century Literature, among others. He also co-edited a recent issue of College Literature on the topic of "Poetry Networks."
Summary
A study of the twentieth-century transatlantic literary lecture tour, with a focus on the role that this circuit played in the formation of transatlantic modernism by following a diverse group of authors: Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats, Rabindranath Tagore, Gertrude Stein, and W. H. Auden.
Additional text
Documenting the movement of the lecture form from the lyceum stage to the halls of academia, this study complements and complicates Mark McGurl's frequently cited book, The Program Era (2009), to show an evolution of modernism (and modernists) as popular product. It offers new insights on racialization and nationalism in its readings of Wilde, Yeats, and Tagore, and writes modernism as a shadow story about the technology of transportation. The prose is a pleasure to read throughout, and like a good public lecture, the book is as enjoyable as it is edifying.
