
Changes in the routines of domestic life were among the most striking social phenomena of the period between the two World Wars, when the home came into focus as a problem to be solved: re-imagined, streamlined, electrified, and generally cleaned up. Modernist writers understood themselves to be living in an epochal moment when the design and meaning of home life were reconceived. Moving among literature, architecture, design, science, and technology, Machines for Living shows how the modernization of the home led to profound changes in domestic life and relied on a set of emergent concepts, including standardization, scientific method, functionalism, efficiency science, and others, that form the basis of literary modernism and stand at the confluence of modernism and modernity. Even as modernist writers criticized the expanding reach of modernization into the home, they drew on its conceptual vocabulary to develop both the thematic and formal commitments of literary modernism. Rosner's work develops a new methodology for interdisciplinary modernist studies and shows how the reinvention of domestic life is central to modernist literature.
This work investigates how the modernization of domestic spaces between the two World Wars fundamentally shaped the thematic and formal structures of literary modernism. Victoria Rosner, an academic specializing in modernist studies, examines the intersection of architecture, design, and literature to argue that the home served as a critical site for testing new concepts like efficiency and standardization. By analyzing the interplay between domestic design and modernist writing, the book posits that the reinvention of the home was not merely a backdrop but a central driver of modernist innovation.
What You Will Find
Scope Limits
Scholars frequently cite this work as a foundational text for understanding the material culture of modernism. Readers often note the academic density of the prose, which is well-suited for researchers and students of interdisciplinary literary studies.
Page Count:
320
Publication Date:
2020-01-01
Publisher:
OUP Oxford
ISBN-10:
0192583816
ISBN-13:
9780192583819
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