A Modernist Fantasy: Modernism, Anarchism, & the Radical Fantastic (ELS Monograph Series Book 111)

"'A modernist fantasy' unearths a legacy of politically radical and formally experimental modernist fantasy fiction, a red thread running from the 1890s to the 1970s. But the recuperation of that lost tradition is as important as revising the critical traditions that excluded it from the start, an exclusion that challenges how we understand modernism itself. The endless definitions of genre and rhetorics in fantasy and science fiction are transformed here by modernist studies as a catalyst. In both stances, anarchist critical and artistic praxis conjures a pathway to flexible new links between fields and ideas." -- From the rear cover Is it possible for the elite criticism of the new modernist studies to engage with devotees of popular culture and fantasy fiction? Can the faeries and dragons of the bestseller lists talk shop with the coteries and little magazines of high modernism? What if their conversation was about anarchism? What surprising fellowship would that trilogy make? Such a dialogue would question root assumptions in all three areas and unearth a legacy of politically radical and formally experimental modernist fantasy fiction, a red thread running from the 1890s to the 1970s. The recuperation of that lost tradition is as important as revising the critical traditions that excluded it from the start. The exclusion of fantasy fiction written by modernists like Hope Mirrlees and John Cowper Powys challenges how we understand modernism itself. The endless definitions of genre and rhetorics in fantasy and science fiction are also transformed here by modernist studies, as a catalyst. In both stances, anarchist critical and artistic praxis conjures a pathway to flexible new links between fields and ideas. Scholars and students of literary modernism, popular culture, critical & cultural theory, and anarchism will find a provocative challenge in A Modernist Fantasy. "This study of modernist literature takes up three key concerns: (1) antiauthoritarian radicalism, or more particularly anarchism, (2) what booksellers would categorize as "fantastic fiction" or more loosely "fantasy," and (3) the recuperation of a 1940s through 1960s moment in late modernist literary culture that revises our critical understanding as it is cast backward and forward in time, rethinking its predecessor fantasy fiction from the 1890s and anticipating offspring in another post-1968 movement outside of the commercial ascension of the fantasy bestseller in 1977. Fantasy, anarchism, and late modernism in combination from the 1890s to 1970s."-- Provided by publisher "'A modernist fantasy' unearths a legacy of politically radical and formally experimental modernist fantasy fiction, a red thread running from the 1890s to the 1970s. But the recuperation of that lost tradition is as important as revising the critical traditions that excluded it from the start, an exclusion that challenges how we understand modernism itself. The endless definitions of genre and rhetorics in fantasy and science fiction are transformed here by modernist studies as a catalyst. In both stances, anarchist critical and artistic praxis conjures a pathway to flexible new links between fields and ideas." --Résumé de l'éditeur