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  • Modernist Literature: An Introduction
  • Alexandra Peat (bio)
Mary Ann Gillies and Aurelea Mahood. Modernist Literature: An Introduction. McGill-Queen’s University Press. vi, 218. $27.95

Mary Ann Gillies and Aurelea Mahood’s accessible and engagingly written Modernist Literature is marketed as an ‘introduction’ to modernism. Thus aimed at an undergraduate audience that is most likely approaching modernist literature for the first time, the book’s primary appeal is as a secondary resource to teachers of introductory or survey courses. It is a valuable addition to critical surveys of modernism that should be particularly praised for challenging some of the prevailing clichés surrounding this field and encouraging teachers and scholars to be always critically aware of the ways in which we construct our modernist canon both inside and outside the classroom. As Gillies and Mahood [End Page 350] ask, ‘What does modernism mean to you?’ they not only draw attention to the ongoing definitional debates about what constitutes modernism, but also contribute to the current critical project to expand and pluralize definitions of the field beyond that of the elitist, solipsistic, formally difficult, white-male canon. Gillies and Mahood are self-reflexive about their methods and the critical choices that they make in this book, thus effectively providing both an introductory textbook and a scholarly model for students to follow.

The book concentrates on the first four decades of the twentieth century but acknowledges the nineteenth-century roots and later permutations of modernism. It focuses on Anglo-American literature while recognizing the global nature of modernism, with a notable interest in Irish writers. And it emphasizes the traditional generic categories of poetry and fiction at the same time as it incorporates discussions of documentary and visual media. Gillies and Mahood employ a unique structure: each of the four chapters of the book considers one decade in tandem with a particular literary genre and a selected theme of modernity. The first chapter considers the short story and the New Woman from 1900 to 1910; the second chapter looks at poetry and emerging technologies of modernity from 1910 to 1920, with particular emphasis on the war years; the third chapter discusses the twenties, the novel, and the slightly vague theme of ‘modern fashions’; and the final chapter turns to the thirties, non-fiction or documentary modernism, and ‘the politics of engagement.’ In each chapter, the writers aim to combine close readings of selected texts with an overview of the literary production of the decade. This is a delicate balancing act that works rather better some times than others, and the book sometimes risks becoming uneven when it moves between attempting to provide a definitive analysis of one particular work and very general summaries of everything else published in the period.

Gillies and Mahood’s approach is strongly historical and materialist – they avow an ‘affiliation with three inter-related critical schools: Marxist criticism, New Historicism, and reception theory’ – which provides a valuable counterpoint to existing studies of modernism, which tend to privilege various theoretical or, in the case of older criticism, more formalist approaches. Each chapter begins with a chronology and a historical overview of the decade, both of which provide helpful teaching material. The decision to ‘introduce’ readers to modernism via a combination of canonical and lesser-known works is also laudable. In understanding and teaching modernism, however, we could gain much from expanding even the scope of this study and making other connections across national, generic, and critical boundaries. To give just a couple of brief examples, the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance could be contrasted with Imagism (discussed in the second chapter here), and Forster’s A [End Page 351] Passage to India (one of two novels analyzed in detail) overlaps in interesting ways with the work of Indian modernist Mulk Raj Anand. Gillies and Mahood’s approach of separating genres and decades could also be supplemented, firstly by tracing the evolution of various forms over the period, and, more importantly, by acknowledging the slippery and porous nature of many of modernism’s generic boundaries. Nonetheless, Modernist Literature: An Introduction has much to offer to students of modernism; in both its content and the questions it poses...

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