The Novel in England, 1900-1950: History and Theory (review)

The Novel in England, 1900-1950: History and Theory. Robert L. Caserio. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1999. Pp. xii + 441. $33.00.

To survey the rich history of the English novel across half a century is no small task, and if Caserio's The Novel in England strikes the reader as particularly massive that is because his literary historical account also offers a variety of recent theoretical perspectives through which to read this varied body of work. His key term throughout is "modernism," or, rather, "modernisms," since one of his study's main concerns is with "the vagaries of canonization and . . . the range of modernisms" (97). That attention to varieties is at once productive and, at times, confusing. On the positive side, one can only welcome his attention to the lesser-known texts of the period. It is refreshing, to say the least, to have Woolf, for example, represented by The Years rather than To the Lighthouse, Lawrence by The Lost Girl rather than Women in Love, Conrad by Chance rather than Heart of Darkness, and so on.

The range of Caserio's reference and his willingness to give critical attention to writers such as Dorothy L. Sayers alongside Syliva Townsend Warner and Elizabeth Bowen also raises the question of the canon. Subtle and nuanced readings of many "forgotten" works give the reader an exciting sense of discovering a hidden terrain, hinting at work still to be done in what has often seemed a period too closely mapped. Yet this generosity of attention also has some conceptual drawbacks, notably when it comes to defining the exact nature of what constitutes "modernism," since the argument for its plural nature doesn't of itself dispose of questions about its historical specificity. Caserio is impatient with claims for the distinctive newness of postmodernism, dismissing (with some justice) large-scale generalizations which seek to distinguish it cleanly from modernism. He cites Linda Hutcheon as a prominent purveyor of these, as in her claim that "postmodernist" history and literature have been rejecting "the ideal of representation that dominated [modernist history and literature] for so long. Both now conceived of their work as exploration, testing, creation of new meanings, rather than as disclosure or revelation of meanings already in some sense there" (85-6). He shows without difficulty--it is not an unfamiliar tactic--that all sorts of examples can be cited to show modernist texts "prefiguring" postmodern ones.

Fair enough, except that this argument too can be reductive, with "modernism(s)" becoming so capacious a category that not only does it hold sway for the full length of Caserio's period but also turns work after the usually agreed period of modernism--work that contains both fiction and continental theory--into what he rather inelegantly calls "second" editions of primary expressions from the first half of the century. There is undeniably a set of intricate questions here relating to the generation of influential examples of French theory from a reading of modernist texts (Derrida, Kristeva, etc.), but that intricacy is quickly lost in Caserio's idea of displaced repetition: de Beauvoir and Lacan are "second editions of [Sayers's] Gaudy Night," while Rebecca West's The Return of the Soldier is "a first edition of de Beauvoir, Irigary, and Spivak" (184, 185). Often using contemporary theory to generate illuminating readings of his chosen texts, this idea of "second editions" tends to give the book an unhistorical feel that seems at odds with its attention elsewhere to social and political events such as the construction of the Welfare State.

It's never completely clear why we need so much "theory" here if it turns out to be a ventriloquistic version of ideas the smart reader might deduce from earlier fictions, and at times there is a rather mechanical quality to Caserio's synoptic readings. For example, a discussion of Olive Schreiner's feminism precipitates a lengthy theoretical excursion into the works of de Beauvoir, Lacan...