The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Literature and Politics

Description

For a long time, people had been schooled to think of modern literature's relationship to politics as indirect or obscure, and often to find the politics of literature deep within its unconsciously ideological structures and forms. But twentieth-century writers were directly involved in political parties and causes, and many viewed their writing as part of their activism. This Companion tell a story of the rich and diverse ways in which literature and politics over the twentieth century coincided, overlapped - and also clashed. Covering some of the century's most influential political ideas, moments, and movements, nineteen academic experts uncover new ways of thinking about the relationship between literature and politics. Liberalism, communism, fascism, suffragism, pacifism, federalism, different nationalisms, civil rights, women's rights, sexual rights, Indigenous rights, environmentalism, neoliberalism: twentieth-century authors wrote in direct response to political movements, ideas, events, and campaigns.

Christos Hadjiyiannis has written widely on modern literature and art, including on the avant-garde, fascist literature/politics, Julia Kristeva, Djuna Barnes, and the afterlives of Byzantium in modern British and North American literature. He is the author of Conservative Modernists: Literature and Tory Politics in Britain, 1900-1920 (CUP, 2008). Rachel Potter writes on modernist literature and culture. Her work has focused on literature, censorship, free expression and writers' organisations. Her books include: Obscene Modernism: Literary Censorship and Experiment, 1900-1940 (OUP, 2013); The Edinburgh Guide to Modernist Literature (EUP, 2012); and Modernism and Democracy: Literary Culture, 1900-1930 (OUP, 2006).