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Daniel R. Schwarz has studied and taught the modern British and Irish novel for decades and now brings his impressive erudition and critical acuity to bear in this insightful study of the major authors and novels from 1890--1930.
After a compelling introduction outlining his method and a substantial first chapter establishing the intellectual, cultural, and literary contexts in which the modern British and Irish novel was produced, Schwarz turns to powerful and sensitive close reading of modernist masterworks. He shows how Hardy's Jude the Obscure, Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim, Lawrence's Sons and Lovers and The Rainbow, Joyce's Dubliners and Ulysses, Woolf's Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse, and Forster's A Passage to India form essential components in a modernist cultural tradition which includes the visual arts.
In his characteristic lucid and readable style, Schwarz's work takes account of recent developments in theory and cultural studies. His persuasive study will not only be invaluable to students and teachers, but will also be of interest to the general reader.
About the author
Daniel R. Schwarz is Professor of English and Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow at Cornell University, where he has won major teaching prizes. He is the author of the recently published Broadway Boogie Woogie (2003) and the widely read Imagining the Holocaust (1999; rev. edn 2000). His many previous publications include Rereading Conrad (2001), Reconfiguring Modernism (1997), The Transformation of the English Novel, 1890--1930 (1989; rev. edn 1995), and Reading Joyce's "Ulysses" (1987; Centenary edn 2004).
Summary
Presents an insightful study of British fiction in the first half of the twentieth century. This book sets the modern British novel in its intellectual, cultural and literary contexts. It features close readings of Hardy's "Jude the Obscure", Conrad's "Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim", and Lawrence's "Sons and Lovers" and "The Rainbow".
