Literature, Modernism and Myth: Belief and Responsibility in the Twentieth Century

Description

Modernist literature attempted to discover through myth an underlying metaphysic to an increasingly fragmented world. In Literature, Modernism and Myth, Michael Bell examines the relationship among myth, modernism and postmodernism. Bell shows how modernists used myth to emphasize the contingency of all values. This anti-foundational element, Bell claims, enables myth to act as a corrective to the political claims of ideological critique. He shows how postmodern concerns with political and social responsibility have in fact been inherited from modernism. Cover Half-title Title Copyright Contents Introduction I 1 Myth in the age of the world view Myth, religion and scienc Myth: romantic to modern Nietzsche and the aesthetic turn Myth and history Why Nietzsche? How the true world became myth II 2 Varieties of modernist mythopoeia W. B. Yeats: 'in dreams begin responsibilities' The final phase James Joyce's Ulysses: Trieste-Zurich-Paris 1914-1922 Consciousness and the world Modernism and science Time, music and spatial form Ulysses and Homer Language History and the superhistorical Ulysses: a critique of modernity? Bloom and the modernist self D. H. Lawrence: 'Am I out of my mind?' Language and myth Language and vision in cThe Horse-Dealer's Daughter' Language in the head 3 Countercases: T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound T. S. Eliot: Religion versus myth. Odysseus unbound: the Cantos of Ezra Pound The Poundian self 'Dove sta memoria?' 4 The politics of modernist mythopoeia Joseph Conrad and the 'Africa' within III 5 The break-up of modernist mythopoeia Novel, story and the foreign: Thomas Mann, Cervantes and Primo Levi The Joseph tetralogy and modernist mythopoeia Nietzsche and Cervantes Story and belief Thomas Mann and Primo Levi: modern to postmodern 6 Living with myth: Cervantes and the new world Alejo Carpentier: recovering the marvellous in The Kingdom of this World Myth and fiction in Gabriel Garcia Marquez' One Hundred Years of Solitude 7 Living without myth: deconstructing the old world Believing in the allegators: Thomas Pynchon and urban legend Ideology and confidence: flights of fancy in Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus IV Conclusion: ideology, myth and criticism Notes Select bibliography Index