Cross-Channel Modernisms - Paperback

by Claire Davison (Editor), Derek Ryan (Editor), Jane A. Goldman (Editor)

Explores modernist aesthetics and cultural exchange in Britain, France and beyond

• Offers cutting-edge explorations of different aspects of artistic exchange between Britain and France, written by experts on both sides of the Channel
• Provides original close readings of canonical and marginalised modernist texts
• Opens up new conceptual paradigms by probing multiple meanings related to 'crossing' and 'channelling' modernism
• Organises chapters around three key themes of 'translating', 'fashioning', 'mediating' that intervene in the new modernist studies

Described by Katherine Mansfield in 1921 as 'a great cold sword between you and your dear love Adventure', in the early twentieth century the English Channel, or 'La Manche' in French, represented both a political and intellectual barrier between European avant-gardism and British restraint, and a bridge for cultural connection and aesthetic innovation. Organised around key terms 'Translating', 'Fashioning' and 'Mediating', this book presents ten original essays by scholars working on both sides of the Channel. Cross-Channel Modernisms historicises artistic exchanges in Britain, France and beyond and proposes a rich conceptual apparatus of 'crossings' and 'channels' through which we can read modernism and understand it as emerging from, and intervening in, an always-already shifting, multivalent, international context.

Back Jacket

'Cross-Channel Modernisms invites us to think anew about the history of connections between Britain and France - a timely and urgent project - in its transdisciplinary voyages across and between the literary, visual and musical arts. Starting from the stories of the people, objects, words and imaginaries that moved back and forth across The Channel/La Manche, the book reconfigures our understanding of transnationalism and translation in the modernist period.' Anna Snaith, King's College London Explores modernist aesthetics and cultural exchange in Britain, France and beyond Described by Katherine Mansfield in 1921 as 'a great cold sword between you and your dear love Adventure', in the early twentieth century the English Channel, or 'La Manche' in French, represented both a political and an intellectual barrier between European avant-gardism and British restraint, and a bridge for cultural connection and aesthetic innovation. Organised around key terms 'Translating', 'Fashioning' and 'Mediating', this book presents ten original essays by scholars working on both sides of the Channel. Cross-Channel Modernisms historicises artistic exchanges in Britain, France and beyond and proposes a rich conceptual apparatus of 'crossings' and 'channels' through which we can read modernism and understand it as emerging from, and intervening in, an always-already shifting, multivalent, international context. Claire Davison is Professor of Modernist Studies at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris. Derek Ryan is Senior Lecturer in Modernist Literature at the University of Kent. Jane Goldman is Reader in English Literature at the University of Glasgow. Cover image: Blouse design by Sonia Delaunay Cover design: [EUP logo] edinburghuniversitypress.com ISBN Barcode

Author Biography

Claire Davison is Professor of Modernist Studies at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, where her teaching and research focus on the borders and boundaries of modernism; this includes the translation and reception of Russian literature in the 1910s-20s; cross-Channel modernist dialogues, and literary and musical modernism. Her current research bears on modernist soundscapes and broadcasting in the 1920s-30s.

Derek Ryan is Senior Lecturer in Modernist Literature at the University of Kent. He is author of Animal Theory: A Critical Introduction (2015) and Virginia Woolf and the Materiality of Theory: Sex, Animal, Life (2013), and has co-edited several volumes including The Handbook to the Bloomsbury Group (2018) and Reading Literary Animals: Medieval to Modern (2019). He is currently the Literature Editor for the Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism and a co-editor of the Cambridge Edition of Virginia Woolf's Flush: A Biography.

Jane Goldman is Reader in English Literature at the University of Glasgow. She is General Editor of the Cambridge Edition of the Writings of Virginia Woolf, and author of The Feminist Aesthetics of Virginia Woolf (1998); The Cambridge Introduction to Virginia Woolf (2006); With you in the Hebrides: Virginia Woolf and Scotland (2013); Modernism, 1910-1945: Image to Apocalypse (2004); and co-editor of Modernism: An Anthology of Sources and Documents (1998).