Great War Modernisms and 'The New Age' Magazine

Description

The literary magazine The New Age brought together a diverse set of intellectuals. Against the backdrop of the First World War, they chose to write about more than modernist art and aesthetics. By closely reading and contextualizing their contributions, Paul Jackson's study explores a variety of political and philosophical responses to modernity. Jackson demonstrates the need to interpret modernisms not merely as an aesthetic phenomena,but as inherently linked to politics and philosophy. By placing the writing of a canonical modernist, Wyndham Lewis, against a figure usually excluded from the canon, H.G. Wells, Jackson's study further examines wartime modernisms that embraced socialist and political views. This study provides the first close analysis of cultural contributions from The New Age, tracing the radical, modernist debates that developed in its pages.

Paul Jackson is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Northampton, UK.

This is an intelligent and thought-provoking study which encourages us to rethink the meaning of 'modernism'. After reading Paul Jackson's book, historians and literary scholars will have to question the utility of a narrow, aesthetic definition of modernism. Jackson shows, in several fine case studies, that the concept has equal validity for explaining the many ways in which intellectuals and politicians were trying to make sense of a world in flux. Great War Modernisms is an important contribution to twentieth-century intellectual history. -- Dan Stone, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK Jackson explores theintense mood of expectancy of a new era induced in the generation of Britishintellectuals directly affected by the catastrophe of the First World War. Indoing so he shows how a wide variety of longings for regeneration are linked withthe radical experimentations in aesthetics, social organization, economics, andpolitics that fed into inter-war European thought - each of which areincreasingly recognized as different manifestations of modernism. As a result,all too familiar 'English' figures suddenly appear in a fresh 'continental'light. This new approach hopefully signals a belated readiness of Britishcultural historians to break out of decades of self-imposed insularity andisolationism when considering Europe-wide cultures of modernism. -- Professor Roger Griffin, Department of History, Oxford Brookes University, UK