Bloomsbury, beasts and British modernist literature / Derek Ryan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ryan, Derek, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Bloomsbury group.

Human-animal relationships in literature.

Modernism (Literature)--Great Britain.

Modernism (Literature).

Modernism (Aesthetics)--Great Britain.

Modernism (Aesthetics).

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

English literature.

Bloomsbury (London, England)--Intellectual life--20th century.

Bloomsbury (London, England).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xi, 244 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, UK ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2023.

Summary:

Bloomsbury, Beasts and British Modernist Literature reveals how the Bloomsbury group's fascination with beasts - from pests to pets, tiny insects to big game - became an integral part of their critique of modernity and conceptualisation of more-than-human worlds. Through a series of close readings, it argues that for Leonard Woolf, David Garnett, Virginia Woolf and E. M. Forster, profound shifts in interspecies relations were intimately connected to questions of imperialism, race, gender, sexuality and technology. Whether in their hunting narratives, zoo fictions, canine biographies or (un)entomological aesthetics, these writers repeatedly test the boundaries between, and imagine transformations of, human and nonhuman by insisting that we attend to the material contexts in which they meet. In demonstrating this, the book enrichens our understanding of British modernism while intervening in debates on the cultural significance of animality from the turn of the twentieth century to the Second World War.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Dec 2022).

ISBN:

1-009-19254-X

1-009-19255-8

1-009-18299-4