Reading The Modern British And Irish Novel 1890-1930

Description:
Daniel R. Schwarz has studied and taught the modern British novel for decades and now brings his impressive erudition and critical acuity to this insightful study of the major authors and novels of the first half of the twentieth century. This book presents an insightful study of British fiction in the first half of the twentieth century. It draws on the author's decades of experience researching and teaching the modern British novel. It sets the modern British novel in its intellectual, cultural and literary contexts.This book features close readings of 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'. It shows how these novels are essential components in a modernist cultural tradition which includes the visual arts. It takes account of recent developments in theory and cultural studies. It is written in an engaging style, avoiding jargon.

Review:
'[Schwarz's introductions] humanize texts that might otherwise seem too foreboding ... The broadly diverse sense of human interest that results can only dispel any contrary sense of modernism's exclusivity, difficulty or autonomy.' James Joyce Quarterly

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Reading the Modern British and Irish Novel.1 'I Was the World in Which I Walked': The Transformation of the British and Irish Novel, 1890-1930.2 Hardy's Jude the Obscure: The Beginnings of the Modern Psychological Novel.3 Conrad's Heart of Darkness: 'We Live, as We Dream - Alone'.4 Conrad's Lord Jim: Reading Texts, Reading Lives.5 Lawrence's Sons and Lovers: Speaking of Paul Morel: Voice, Unity, and Meaning.6 Lawrence's The Rainbow: Family Chronicle, Sexual Fulfillment, and the Quest for Form and Values.7 Joyce's Dubliners: Moral Paralysis in Dublin.8 Joyce's Ulysses: The Odyssey of Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus on June 16, 1904.9 Woolf's Mrs Dalloway: Sexual Repression, Madness, and Social Form.10 Woolf's To the Lighthouse: Choreographing Life and Creating Art as Time Passes.11 Forster's Passage to India: The Novel of Manners as Political Novel.Notes.Select Bibliography.

Author Biography:
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).