Apr 14, 2015 By: rolen
Making History New: Modernism and Historical Narrative, by Seamus O鈥橫alley. Oxford University Press, 2014.
Seamus O鈥橫alley, Lecturer in English at Stern College for Women, boldly challenges the claim that the literary modernist movement, in its quest for novelty of form, abandoned historical narrative. Examining three British writers 鈥 Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, and Rebecca West 鈥 he shows how that movement鈥檚 literature actually engaged history, the rendering of which was transformed in unique ways: the depiction of a tumultuous Latin American country in Conrad鈥檚 Nostromo; the amnesia of the shell-shocked veterans in Ford鈥檚 World War One novels; 鈥渉istory鈥檚 impossibility鈥 in Rebecca West鈥檚 travelogue Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. O鈥橫alley鈥檚 compelling book concludes with an overview of historians who since World War Two have adapted the literary modernists鈥 approach while grappling with unprecedented horrors such as genocide. Making History New bridges the gap between history and fiction, exploring the process of collective human experience.
Posted by Hallie Cantor
