Modernism à la Mode : Fashion and the Ends of Literature / Elizabeth M. Sheehan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sheehan, Elizabeth M., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Modernism (Literature)--United States.

Modernism (Literature).

Modernism (Literature)--Great Britain.

Fashion in literature.

American fiction--20th century--History and criticism.

American fiction.

English fiction--20th century--History and criticism.

English fiction.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (1 online resource.)

Place of Publication:

Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, [2018]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Modernism à la Mode argues that fashion describes why and how literary modernism matters in its own historical moment and ours. Bringing together texts, textiles, and theories of dress, Elizabeth Sheehan shows that writers, including Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, W.E.B. Du Bois, Nella Larsen, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, turned to fashion to understand what their own stylized works could do in the context of global capital, systemic violence, and social transformation. Modernists engage with fashion as a mood, a set of material objects, and a target of critique, and, in doing so, anticipate and address contemporary debates centered on the uses of literature and literary criticism amidst the supposed crisis in the humanities. A modernist affect with a purpose, no less.By engaging modernism à la mode-that is, contingently, contextually, and in light of contemporary concerns-this book offers an alternative to the often-untenable distinctions between strong or weak, suspicious or reparative, and politically activist or quietist approaches to literature, which frame current debates about literary methodology. As fashion helps us to describe what modernist texts do, it enables us to do more with modernism as a form of inquiry, perception, and critique. Fashion and modernism are interwoven forms of inquiry, perception, and critique, writes Sheehan. It is fashion that puts the work of early twentieth-century writers in conversation with twenty-first century theories of emotion, materiality, animality, beauty, and history.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Illustrations

Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION

1. MOODS, MODES, MODERNISM

2. MATERIAL CONCERNS

3. "THIS GREAT WORK OF THE CREATION OF BEAUTY"

4. PROPHETS AND HISTORICISTS

CODA

Notes

Works Cited

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 16. Mai 2019)

ISBN:

1-5017-2815-6

OCLC:

1035322262