This study explores the relations of T.S. Eliot and James Joyce with certain antecedents, such as Dante, Flaubert and Baudelaire; with contemporaries including Pound and Yeats; and with their readers, in order to illuminate the authors' historic mutual venture in English literature.
A Lambda Literary Awards Finalist Named one of the best books of 2017 by NPR's Book Concierge A revelatory narrative of the intersecting lives and works of revered authors Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster and D. H. Lawrence during 1922, the birth year of modernism The World Broke in Two tells the fascinating story of the intellectual and personal journeys four legendary writers, Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster, and D. H. Lawrence, make over the course of one pivotal year. As 1922 begins, all four are literally at a loss for words, confronting an uncertain creative future despite success in the past. The literary ground is shifting, as Ulysses is published in February and Proust’s In Search of Lost Time begins to be published in England in the autumn. Yet, dismal as their prospects seemed in January, by the end of the year Woolf has started Mrs. Dalloway, Forster has, for the first time in nearly a decade, returned to work on the novel that will become A Passage to India, Lawrence has written Kangaroo, his unjustly neglected and most autobiographical novel, and Eliot has finished—and published to acclaim—“The Waste Land." As Willa Cather put it, “The world broke in two in 1922 or thereabouts,” and what these writers were struggling with that year was in fact the invention of modernism. Based on original research, Bill Goldstein's The World Broke in Two captures both the literary breakthroughs and the intense personal dramas of these beloved writers as they strive for greatness.
Though he published just a handful of major works in his lifetime, James Joyce (1882-1941) continues to fascinate readers around the world and remains one of the most important literary figures of the 20th century. The complexity of Joyce's style has attracted--and occasionally puzzled--generations of readers who have succumbed to the richness of his literary world. This literary companion guides readers through his four major works--Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake--with chapter-by-chapter discussions and critical inquiry. An A to Z format covers the works, people, history and context that influenced his writing. Appendices summarize notable Joycean literary criticism and biography, and also discuss significant films based on his work.
The focal point of this study is one of the masterpieces of Anglo-American poetry, T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, tackled from the perspective of translation. In this particular case, translation is deemed to be not only an intra- and inter-linguistic transfer, but also a form of intercultural contact. The book centres on a comparative study of the poem with five of its Romanian translations within the framework of Romanian letters. Thus, it also presents a thorough analysis of the target literary and cultural context of the various moments of the translation production, with particular consideration being given to reception-related issues. Due to this complex approach, this study sketches the most comprehensive contextualisation of Eliot’s poem in Romanian culture. It analyses the source poem as the topos of intercultural exchanges which encourage cultural reconciliation and dialogue. The wide range of cultural references which are recontextualised and reinterpreted in Eliot’s poem suggest the opportunity of seeing The Waste Land as a master work of translation in itself, which accommodates various inter-systemic relations and transfers of meaning. Finally, this study reveals the poet’s activity as a translator guided by the main tenets of modernist production practice. Due to its inter-disciplinary approach and its focus on intercultural dialogue, this book will appeal to a wide range of researchers in the field of Humanities.
Thornton takes a fresh look at important psychological and cultural issues in this novel, arguing that although it may be a classic text of literary modernism, it is a fundamentally antimodernist work. This comprehensive and thoughtful book provides readers with a new cultural critique and intellectual history of 'Portrait', which promises to become one of the major discussions of the novel.
Founder of the Left Bank bookstore Shakespeare and Company and the first publisher of James Joyce's Ulysses, Sylvia Beach had a legendary facility for nurturing literary talent. In this first collection of her letters, we witness Beach's day-to-day dealings as bookseller and publisher to expatriate Paris. Friends and clients include Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, H.D., Ezra Pound, Janet Flanner, William Carlos Williams, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, and Richard Wright. As librarian, publicist, publisher, and translator, Beach carved out a unique space for herself in English and French letters. This collection reveals Beach's charm and resourcefulness, sharing her negotiations with Marianne Moore to place Joyce's work in The Dial; her battle to curb the piracy of Ulysses in the United States; her struggle to keep Shakespeare and Company afloat during the Depression; and her complicated affair with the French bookstore owner Adrienne Monnier. These letters also recount Beach's childhood in New Jersey; her work in Serbia with the American Red Cross; her internment in a German prison camp; and her friendship with a new generation of expatriates in the 1950s and 1960s. Beach was the consummate American in Paris and a tireless champion of the avant-garde. Her warmth and wit made the Rue de l'Odéon the heart of modernist Paris.
Richard Badenhausen examines the crucial role that collaboration with other writers played in the development of T. S. Eliot's works from the earliest poetry and unpublished prose to the late plays. He demonstrates Eliot's dependence on collaboration in order to create, but also his struggle to accept the implications of the process. In case-studies of Eliot's collaborations, Badenhausen reveals the complexities of Eliot's theory and practice of collaboration. Examining a wide range of familiar and uncollected materials, Badenhausen explores Eliot's social, psychological, textual encounters with collaborators such as Ezra Pound, John Hayward, Martin Browne, and Vivienne Eliot, among others. Finally, this study shows how Eliot's later work increasingly accommodates his audience as he attempted to apply his theories of collaboration more broadly to social, cultural, and political concerns.