Kirjahaku

Was modern primitivism complicit with the ideologies of colonialism, or was it a multivalent encounter with difference? Examining race and modernism through a wider and more historically contextualized study, Sweeney brings together a variety of published and new scholarship to expand the discussion on the links between modernism and primitivism. Tracing the path from Dada and Surrealism to Josephine Baker and Nancy Cunard's Negro: An Anthology, she shows the development of négrophilie from the interest in black cultural forms in the early 1920s to a more serious engagement with difference and representations in the 1930s. Considering modernism, race, and colonialism simultaneously, this work breaks from traditional boundaries of disciplines or geographic areas.Why was the primitive so popular in this era? Sweeney shows how high, popular, and mass cultural contexts constructed primitivism and how black diasporic groups in Paris challenged this construction. Included is research from original archival material from black diasporic publications in Paris, examining their challenges to primitivism in French literature and state-sponsored exoticism. The transatlantic movement of modernism and primitivism also is part of this broad comparative study.

Widely acknowledged as an important, if highly controversial, figure in contemporary literature, French novelist and poet Michel Houellebecq has elicited diverse critical responses.In this book Carole Sweeney examines his novels as a response to the advance of neoliberalism into all areas of affective human life. This historicizing study argues that le monde houellebecquien is an ‘atomised society’ of banal quotidian alienation populated by quietly resentful men who are the botched subjects of late-capitalism. Addressing Houellebecq’s handling of the ‘failure’ of the radical thought of ‘68, Sweeney looks at the ways in which his fiction treats feminism, the decline of religion and the family, as well asthe obsolescence of French ‘theory’ and the Sartrean notion of ‘engaged’ literature. Reading the world with the disappointed idealism of a contemporary moralist, Houellebecq’s novels, Sweeney argues, fluctuate between despair for the world as it is and a limp utopian hope for a post-humanity.

Widely acknowledged as an important, if highly controversial, figure in contemporary literature, French novelist and poet Michel Houellebecq has elicited diverse critical responses.In this book Carole Sweeney examines his novels as a response to the advance of neoliberalism into all areas of affective human life. This historicizing study argues that le monde houellebecquien is an ‘atomised society’ of banal quotidian alienation populated by quietly resentful men who are the botched subjects of late-capitalism. Addressing Houellebecq’s handling of the ‘failure’ of the radical thought of ‘68, Sweeney looks at the ways in which his fiction treats feminism, the decline of religion and the family, as well asthe obsolescence of French ‘theory’ and the Sartrean notion of ‘engaged’ literature. Reading the world with the disappointed idealism of a contemporary moralist, Houellebecq’s novels, Sweeney argues, fluctuate between despair for the world as it is and a limp utopian hope for a post-humanity.

Examines British women's experimental writing in historical contexts, 19451970The first detailed literary history of women's experimental writing in post-war BritainProvides a detailed historical overview combined with close critical readings and complemented by an extensive bibliography of primary and secondary sourcesConsiders literature in changing cultural and technological contexts of production through the BBC, the Arts Council, and avant garde publishing housesOffers detailed biographical information on each writer based on original archival research carried out in the British Library and at the Harry Ransom Centre at the University of TexasFilling in a blank spot in the history of twentieth-century women's writing, Carole Sweeney examines the work of five experimental writers, Anna Kavan, Brigid Brophy, Christine Brooke-Rose, Eva Figes and Ann Quin, whose writing has been neglected in accounts of the development of post-1945 British literature. Each of these writers, Sweeney argues, engaged in diverse formal experiments that challenge the critical commonplace suggesting that after the end of aesthetic modernism the mid-century British novel was characterised by a wholesale return to realism. Avoiding any insistence on a straightforward opposition between literary realism and experimentalism, this study draws upon original archival and biographical material and offers close readings of the creative and critical work of these 'vagabond' writers, demonstrating how they wrote against aesthetic and thematic conventions of their times and negotiated (and often repudiated) concepts of 'feminine' writing.

In this fascinating and timely volume, Carole Sweeney reminds us how five previously well-known experimental women writers of the mid-twentieth century are more or less neglected today. Via masterful textual analysis of some of their most notable works, together with concise biographical synopses, their personalities, creative endeavours and sheer radicalism are showcased for a new generation of readers to appreciate.'Gerri Kimber, Visiting Professor, University of NorthamptonExamines British women's experimental writing in historical contexts, 1945 1970Filling in a blank spot in the history of twentieth-century women's writing, Carole Sweeney examines the work of five experimental writers, Anna Kavan, Brigid Brophy, Christine Brooke-Rose, Eva Figes and Ann Quin, whose writing has been neglected in accounts of the development of post-1945 British literature. Each of these writers, Sweeney argues, engaged in diverse formal experiments that challenge the critical commonplace suggesting that after the end of aesthetic modernism the mid-century British novel was characterised by a wholesale return to realism. Avoiding any insistence on a straightforward opposition between literary realism and experimentalism, this study draws upon original archival and biographical material and offers close readings of the creative and critical work of these 'vagabond' writers, demonstrating how they wrote against aesthetic and thematic conventions of their times and negotiated (and often repudiated) concepts of 'feminine' writing.