Author Description

In this book, Michael North makes an ambitious journey back to 1922, examining the world in which Ulysses and The Waste Land - two texts synonymous with literary modernism - were first published. By reconstructing the larger culture into which these works were introduced, this study attempts to give a new start to critical controversies about aesthetic modernism and modern culture. Returning to the world of 1922, North discovers many connections between people, movements, disciplines, and artistic works that are usually considered to be distinct from one another. In disclosing these connections, this book provides evidence to dispute common generalizations about the separation of modern literature from the social and cultural world around it. Paying attention to literary masterpieces as well as lesser-known texts, North considers the work of Howard Carter, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Bronislaw Malinowski, Virginia Woolf, Anzia Yezierska, D. H. Lawrence, Sherwood Anderson, E. E. Cummings, Charlie Chaplin, Willa Cather, Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, and a host of other writers, both famous and forgotten.