The Edinburgh Companion to Twentieth-Century Literatures in English
Edited by Brian McHale, Randall Stevenson
An imaginatively constructed new literary history of the twentieth century
This companion with a difference sets a controversial new agenda for literary-historical analysis. Far from the usual forced march through the decades, genres and national literatures, this reference work for the new century cuts across familiar categories, focusing instead on literary ‘hot spots’: Freud’s Vienna and Conrad’s Congo in 1899, Chicago and London in 1912, the Somme in July 1916, Dublin, London and Harlem in 1922, and so on, down to Bradford and Berlin in 1989 (the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, the new digital media), Stockholm in 1993 (Toni Morrison’s Nobel Prize) and September 11, 2001.
The Companion:
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction: On or about December 1910, London: Introduction - Brian McHale and Randall Stevenson
Section I. The First Moderns
1. 1899, Vienna and the Congo: The Art of Darkness - Vassiliki Kolocotroni
2. 1912, London, Chicago, Florence and New York: Modernist Moments, Feminist Mappings - Linda Kinnahan
3. 1916, Flanders, London and Dublin: 'Everything Has Gone Well' - Randall Stevenson
4. 1922, Paris, New York, London: The Modernist as International Hero - Michael North
Section II. Between the Wars
5. 1925, London, New York, Paris: Metropolitan Modernisms - Parallax and Palimpsest - Jane Goldman
6. 1928, London: A Strange Interlude - Chris Baldick
7: 1936, Madrid: The Heart of the World - Cary Nelson
8. 1941, London Under the Blitz: Culture as Counter-History - Tyrus Miller
Section III. Cold War and Empire's Ebb
9. 1944, Melbourne and Adelaide: The Ern Malley Hoax - Philip Mead
10. May, 1955, Disneyland: 'The Happiest Place on Earth' and the Fiction of Cold War Culture - Alan Nadel
11. 1956, Suez and Sloane Square: Empire's Ebb and Flow - Rick Rylance
12. 1960, Lagos and Nairobi: 'Things Fall Apart' and 'The Empire Writes Back' - Patrick Williams
13. 1961, Jerusalem: Eichmann and the Ethic of Complicity - R. Clifton Spargo
14. 1963, London: The Myth of the Artist and the Woman Writer - Patricia Waugh
Section IV. Millennium Approaches
15. 1967, Liverpool, London, San Francisco and Vietnam: 'We Hope You Will Enjoy the Show' - John Hellmann
16. 1973, Planet Earth: The Imagination of the Global - Ursula K. Heise
17. 1979, Edinburgh and Glasgow: Devolution Deferred - Cairns Craig
19. 1989, Berlin and Bradford: Out of the Cold, Into the Fire -Andrew Teverson
19. February 11th 1990, South Africa: Apartheid and After - Louise Bethlehem
20. 1991, The Web: Network Fictions - Joseph Tabbi
21. 1993, Stockholm: A Prize for Toni Morrison - Abdulrazak Gurnah
Coda: September 11, 2001, New York: Two Y2K's - Brian McHale and Randall Stevenson
Notes on Contributors
Index
