PETER BROOKER - Modernism/Postmodernism

Modernism/Postmodernism

General Editor

STAN SMITH, Professor of English, University of Dundee

Published Titles

K.M. NEWTON, George Eliot
MARY EAGLETON, Feminist Literary Criticism
GARY WALLER, Shakespeare's Comedies
JOHN DRAKAKIS, Shakespearean Tragedy

RICHARD WILSON AND RICHARD DUTTON, New Historicism and Renaissance Drama

PETER WIDDOWSON, D.H. Lawrence

PETER BROOKER, Modernism/Postmodernism

RACHEL BOWLBY, Virginia Woolf

FRANCIS MULHERN, Contemporary Marxist Literary Criticism

ANNABEL PATTERSON, John Milton

CYNTHIA CHASE, Romanticism

MICHAEL O'NEILL, Shelley

STEPHANIE TRIGG, Medieval English Poetry

ANTONY EASTHOPE, Contemporary Film Theory

TERRY EAGLETON, Ideology

MAUD ELLMANN, Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism

ANDREW BENNETT, Readers and Reading

MARK CURRIE, Metafiction

BREAN HAMMOND, Pope

GRAHAM HOLDERNESS, BRYAN LOUGHREY AND ANDREW MURPHY, Shakespeare's Roman Plays

STEVEN CONNOR, Charles Dickens

REBECCA STOTT, Tennyson

ANDREW HADFIELD, Spenser

SUSANA ONEGA AND JOSE ANGEL GARCIA LANDA, Narratology

TESS COSSLETT, Victorian Women Poets

BART MOORE-GILBERT, GARETH STANTON AND WILLIAM MALEY, Postcolonial Criticism

JOHN DRAKAKIS, Tragedy

ANITA PACHECO, Early Women Writers

Edited and Introduced by
PETER BROOKER

First published 1992 by Pearson Education Limited

Published 2014 by Routledge
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Copyright 1992, Taylor & Francis.

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ISBN 978- 0-582-06357-0 (pbk)

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Modernism/Postmodernism/edited and introduced by Peter Brooker.
p. cm. - (Longman critical readers)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-582-06358-2 (csd.). - ISBN-0582-06357- 4
(pbk.)
1. Modernism (Literature) 2. Postmodernism (Literature)
3. Literature, Modern-20th century-History and critcism.
I. Brooker, Peter. II. Series.
PN771.M6175 1992
809'.91 - dc20

91-24537
CIP

Set by 9K in 9 / 11.5 Palatino

The outlines of contemporary critical theory are now often taught as a standard feature of a degree in literary studies. The development of particular theories has seen a thorough transformation of literary criticism. For example, Marxist and Foucauldian theories have revolutionised Shakespeare studies, and 'deconstruction' has led to a complete reassessment of Romantic poetry. Feminist criticism has left scarcely any period of literature unaffected by its searching critiques. Teachers of literary studies can no longer fall back on a standardised, received, methodology.

Lectures and teachers are now urgently looking for guidance in a rapidly changing critical environment. They need help in understanding the latest revisions in literary theory, and especially in grasping the practical effects of the new theories in the form of theortetically sensitised new readings. A number of volumes in the series anthologise important essays on particular theories. However, in order to grasp the full implications and possible uses of particular theories it is essential to see them put to work. This series provides substantial volumes of new readings, presented in an accessible form and with a significant amount of editorial guidance.

Each volume includes a substantial introduction which explores the theoretical issues and conflicts embodied in the essays selected and locates areas of disagreement between positions. The pluralism of theories has to be put on the agenda of literary studies. We can no longer pretend that we all tacitly accept the same practices in literary studies. Neither is a laissez-faire attitude any longer tenable. Literature departments need to go beyond the mere toleration of theoretical differences: it is not enough merely to agree to differ; they need actually to 'stage' the differences openly. The volumes in this series all attempt to dramatise the differences, not necessarily with a view to resolving them but in order to foreground the choices presented by different theories or to argue for a particular route through the impasses the differences present.

The theory 'revolution' has had real effects. It has loosened the grip of traditional empiricist and romantic assumptions about language and literature. It is not always clear what is being proposed as the new agenda for literary studies, and indeed the very notion of 'literature' is questioned by the post-structuralist strain in theory. However, the uncertainties and obscurities of contemporary theories appear much less worrying when we see what the best critics have been able to do with them in practice. This series aims to disseminate the best of recent criticism, and to show that it is possible to re-read the canonical texts of literature in new and challenging ways.