Il Modernist Magazine Project, del quale sono co-direttore sin dal 2006, è nato con l’intento di ... more Il Modernist Magazine Project, del quale sono co-direttore sin dal 2006, è nato con l’intento di documentare il contributo dato dai little magazines – e affini – alla costruzione del modernismo. Sono stati finora pubblicati tre volumi di saggi dedicati rispettivamente alle riviste moderniste nel Regno Unito e in Irlanda, nell’America del nord e in Europa. È da poco iniziata la seconda fase del progetto che prevede altri volumi relativi al resto del mondo. L’esperienza maturata durante questo ..
offers a compelling cultural history and posits these publications as an important force-field in... more offers a compelling cultural history and posits these publications as an important force-field in a context where shortly after modernist magazines appeared. MacLeod calls for the expansion of the field of modern periodical studies so as to include the fin-de-siècle periodicals within its scope, despite that fact that their "democratic character' and their "highly personalized nature" have rendered [them] largely irrelevant to trends in modernist studies." (8). Although these publications do not anticipate the tenor of modernist magazines in terms of content, readership and sustained embrace of avant-gardism, the author argues that they form an important backdrop for magazine modernism, on the level of how they were geared towards cultural and social change. Poised between critical analysis and comprehensiveness, MacLeod's impressively documented study of a large number of magazines that were selected out of a dauntingly large corpus more than lives up to its promise: proposing a "rather capacious and, in some respects, counterintuitive definition of the little magazine," (12) the author widens our sense of "little magazineness" (17) through an exploration of a hitherto under-researched field. MacLeod's approach is aligned with the "expansive tendency" of "all period-centered areas of literary scholarship," across "temporal, spatial, and vertical directions," as Douglas Mao and Rebecca Walkowitz had put it more than a decade ago (737). 1 Most notably, MacLeod's timely study takes up the
This article examines the state of the textual editions of Jean Rhys's work. When we read, te... more This article examines the state of the textual editions of Jean Rhys's work. When we read, teach and write about Rhys, what are the texts that we use and are these texts the ones that we really want or the ones that we just have to use because there are no others available? The article suggests that future interpretation of Rhys's work can best be served by improved editions of her works and analyses different strategies for producing such texts, whether in terms of scholarly editions, practical reading editions, or electronic or genetic editions. The complex compositional history of many of Rhys's texts (such as Wide Sargasso Sea or Voyage in the Dark), the article argues, deserves better editions than exist currently.
This article analyses the role of advertisements in the visual and verbal culture of modernist ‘l... more This article analyses the role of advertisements in the visual and verbal culture of modernist ‘little magazines’, and focuses upon Rhythm (1911–13), the magazine edited by Katherine Mansfield and John Middleton Murry. It traces how advertisements are implicated in the culture of the ‘little magazine’ as much as in commercial magazines, and indicates how Rhythm provides an interesting case-study for demonstrating how modernism engages critically with the commodification represented by the discourse of advertising. The article analyses how the visual ‘look’ of Rhythm as an avant-garde magazine, as applied in the illustrations to poems by Mansfield, also extends to the design of advertisements for commercial organisations such as the department store Heals. Rhythm thus demonstrates a dilemma over the relation between art and commercial culture that runs throughout modernism, one which is noticed most acutely in modernist magazines.
What do we talk about when we talk about periodicals? It seems to depend on who the 'we'... more What do we talk about when we talk about periodicals? It seems to depend on who the 'we' are that are doing the talking. Literary critics and art historians have often used periodicals and other forms of print culture as objects to be excavated for works by key authors and artists; ...
depicts himself during the act of drawing with bystanders commenting on the quality of his work. ... more depicts himself during the act of drawing with bystanders commenting on the quality of his work. Despite all the exciting ways in which the pieces of twenty-first-century travel writing in German presented in this collection offer new perspectives onmobility and writing in the postmodern world, some problems remain. The essays in this volume criticise the fact that mostly sensitive descriptions of foreign places and cultures notwithstanding, travel writers often struggle to avoid a colonial perspective, which seems to be the lingering heritage of the age of Enlightenment. This is the case when the white western privilege of the author-traveller is not thematised, as Shafi notes of Ransmayer’s Atlas eines ängstlichen Mannes (70) and Hachmann observes in Ilja Trojanow’s Zu den heiligen Quellen des Islam (153), among others. Also, Coleman argues that, while well-intended, Zeh’s practice of equating herself with the locals in Die Stille ist ein Geräusch creates a universalist perspective that does not acknowledge cultural difference adequately (76). While Wright Hurley denounces the absence of indigenous voices in Hoppe (135), this unfortunately also holds true for the essays in the collection, although this absence may well lie within the source material. Of course, there is no easy way of representing appropriately the difference between travellers and the people living in the places they visit. One can criticise inequality, instability and aim to narrate the history, culture and customs of these places as accurately and sensitively as possible. Most of the discussions and primary texts analysed in Anxious Journeys manage to successfully navigate this difficult territory and the volume thus constitutes the first comprehensive collection to analyse twenty-first-century travel writing in German in a compelling and relevant way.
This innovative book examines the development of modernism in four European cities: London, Paris... more This innovative book examines the development of modernism in four European cities: London, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna. Focusing upon how literary and cultural outsiders represented various spaces in these cities, it draws upon contemporary theories of affect, mood, and literary geography to offer an original account of the geographical emotions of modernism. It considers three broad features of urban modernism: the built environment of the particular cities, such as cafés or transport systems; the cultural institutions of publishing that underpinned the development of modernism in these locations; and the complex perceptions of writers and artists who were outsiders to the four cities. Particular attention is thus given to the transnational qualities of modernism by examining figures whose view of the cities considered is that of migrants, exiles, or strangers. The writers and artists discussed include Mulk Raj Anand, Gwendolyn Bennett, Bryher, Blaise Cendrars, Joseph Conrad, T. S. ...
first published in Cultural Encounters: European Travel Writing in the 1930s, ends. Charles Burde... more first published in Cultural Encounters: European Travel Writing in the 1930s, ends. Charles Burdett and Derek Duncan (2002)
What role has aesthetics in the later work of Mic he I Foucault? In the final completed volumes o... more What role has aesthetics in the later work of Mic he I Foucault? In the final completed volumes of his History of Sexuality (translated as Vol. 2, The Use of Pleasure and Vol. 3, The Care of the Self) aesthetic activity becomes a key to his understanding of the vagaries of sexuality in the Greek and Greco-Roman periods. 1 Sexuality in Antiquity is understood by reference to what Foucault variously calls 'the care ofthe self', 'practices of the self', 'techniques of the self' or 'an aesthetics of existence'. As Peter Dews has noted, Foucault here shifts from the seemingly subject-less world encapsulated in the 'death of man' in The Order of Things (1966), to a world of 'self-constituting subjects' busily creating themselves according to aesthetic criteria. I want to argue that Foucault's later work vacillates between recommending some form of aestheticisation of everyday life and a 'problematisation' of the role of the aesth...
Il Modernist Magazine Project, del quale sono co-direttore sin dal 2006, è nato con l’intento di ... more Il Modernist Magazine Project, del quale sono co-direttore sin dal 2006, è nato con l’intento di documentare il contributo dato dai little magazines – e affini – alla costruzione del modernismo. Sono stati finora pubblicati tre volumi di saggi dedicati rispettivamente alle riviste moderniste nel Regno Unito e in Irlanda, nell’America del nord e in Europa. È da poco iniziata la seconda fase del progetto che prevede altri volumi relativi al resto del mondo. L’esperienza maturata durante questo ..
offers a compelling cultural history and posits these publications as an important force-field in... more offers a compelling cultural history and posits these publications as an important force-field in a context where shortly after modernist magazines appeared. MacLeod calls for the expansion of the field of modern periodical studies so as to include the fin-de-siècle periodicals within its scope, despite that fact that their "democratic character' and their "highly personalized nature" have rendered [them] largely irrelevant to trends in modernist studies." (8). Although these publications do not anticipate the tenor of modernist magazines in terms of content, readership and sustained embrace of avant-gardism, the author argues that they form an important backdrop for magazine modernism, on the level of how they were geared towards cultural and social change. Poised between critical analysis and comprehensiveness, MacLeod's impressively documented study of a large number of magazines that were selected out of a dauntingly large corpus more than lives up to its promise: proposing a "rather capacious and, in some respects, counterintuitive definition of the little magazine," (12) the author widens our sense of "little magazineness" (17) through an exploration of a hitherto under-researched field. MacLeod's approach is aligned with the "expansive tendency" of "all period-centered areas of literary scholarship," across "temporal, spatial, and vertical directions," as Douglas Mao and Rebecca Walkowitz had put it more than a decade ago (737). 1 Most notably, MacLeod's timely study takes up the
This article examines the state of the textual editions of Jean Rhys's work. When we read, te... more This article examines the state of the textual editions of Jean Rhys's work. When we read, teach and write about Rhys, what are the texts that we use and are these texts the ones that we really want or the ones that we just have to use because there are no others available? The article suggests that future interpretation of Rhys's work can best be served by improved editions of her works and analyses different strategies for producing such texts, whether in terms of scholarly editions, practical reading editions, or electronic or genetic editions. The complex compositional history of many of Rhys's texts (such as Wide Sargasso Sea or Voyage in the Dark), the article argues, deserves better editions than exist currently.
This article analyses the role of advertisements in the visual and verbal culture of modernist ‘l... more This article analyses the role of advertisements in the visual and verbal culture of modernist ‘little magazines’, and focuses upon Rhythm (1911–13), the magazine edited by Katherine Mansfield and John Middleton Murry. It traces how advertisements are implicated in the culture of the ‘little magazine’ as much as in commercial magazines, and indicates how Rhythm provides an interesting case-study for demonstrating how modernism engages critically with the commodification represented by the discourse of advertising. The article analyses how the visual ‘look’ of Rhythm as an avant-garde magazine, as applied in the illustrations to poems by Mansfield, also extends to the design of advertisements for commercial organisations such as the department store Heals. Rhythm thus demonstrates a dilemma over the relation between art and commercial culture that runs throughout modernism, one which is noticed most acutely in modernist magazines.
What do we talk about when we talk about periodicals? It seems to depend on who the 'we'... more What do we talk about when we talk about periodicals? It seems to depend on who the 'we' are that are doing the talking. Literary critics and art historians have often used periodicals and other forms of print culture as objects to be excavated for works by key authors and artists; ...
depicts himself during the act of drawing with bystanders commenting on the quality of his work. ... more depicts himself during the act of drawing with bystanders commenting on the quality of his work. Despite all the exciting ways in which the pieces of twenty-first-century travel writing in German presented in this collection offer new perspectives onmobility and writing in the postmodern world, some problems remain. The essays in this volume criticise the fact that mostly sensitive descriptions of foreign places and cultures notwithstanding, travel writers often struggle to avoid a colonial perspective, which seems to be the lingering heritage of the age of Enlightenment. This is the case when the white western privilege of the author-traveller is not thematised, as Shafi notes of Ransmayer’s Atlas eines ängstlichen Mannes (70) and Hachmann observes in Ilja Trojanow’s Zu den heiligen Quellen des Islam (153), among others. Also, Coleman argues that, while well-intended, Zeh’s practice of equating herself with the locals in Die Stille ist ein Geräusch creates a universalist perspective that does not acknowledge cultural difference adequately (76). While Wright Hurley denounces the absence of indigenous voices in Hoppe (135), this unfortunately also holds true for the essays in the collection, although this absence may well lie within the source material. Of course, there is no easy way of representing appropriately the difference between travellers and the people living in the places they visit. One can criticise inequality, instability and aim to narrate the history, culture and customs of these places as accurately and sensitively as possible. Most of the discussions and primary texts analysed in Anxious Journeys manage to successfully navigate this difficult territory and the volume thus constitutes the first comprehensive collection to analyse twenty-first-century travel writing in German in a compelling and relevant way.
This innovative book examines the development of modernism in four European cities: London, Paris... more This innovative book examines the development of modernism in four European cities: London, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna. Focusing upon how literary and cultural outsiders represented various spaces in these cities, it draws upon contemporary theories of affect, mood, and literary geography to offer an original account of the geographical emotions of modernism. It considers three broad features of urban modernism: the built environment of the particular cities, such as cafés or transport systems; the cultural institutions of publishing that underpinned the development of modernism in these locations; and the complex perceptions of writers and artists who were outsiders to the four cities. Particular attention is thus given to the transnational qualities of modernism by examining figures whose view of the cities considered is that of migrants, exiles, or strangers. The writers and artists discussed include Mulk Raj Anand, Gwendolyn Bennett, Bryher, Blaise Cendrars, Joseph Conrad, T. S. ...
first published in Cultural Encounters: European Travel Writing in the 1930s, ends. Charles Burde... more first published in Cultural Encounters: European Travel Writing in the 1930s, ends. Charles Burdett and Derek Duncan (2002)
What role has aesthetics in the later work of Mic he I Foucault? In the final completed volumes o... more What role has aesthetics in the later work of Mic he I Foucault? In the final completed volumes of his History of Sexuality (translated as Vol. 2, The Use of Pleasure and Vol. 3, The Care of the Self) aesthetic activity becomes a key to his understanding of the vagaries of sexuality in the Greek and Greco-Roman periods. 1 Sexuality in Antiquity is understood by reference to what Foucault variously calls 'the care ofthe self', 'practices of the self', 'techniques of the self' or 'an aesthetics of existence'. As Peter Dews has noted, Foucault here shifts from the seemingly subject-less world encapsulated in the 'death of man' in The Order of Things (1966), to a world of 'self-constituting subjects' busily creating themselves according to aesthetic criteria. I want to argue that Foucault's later work vacillates between recommending some form of aestheticisation of everyday life and a 'problematisation' of the role of the aesth...
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