Literature, Modernism and Myth : Belief and Responsibility in the Twentieth Century

The use of myth in Modernist literature is a misleadingly familiar theme. Joyce's appropriation of Homer's Odyssey and Eliot's of Frazer's Golden Bough are, like Lawrence's primitivism or Yeats's nationalist folklore, attempts to discover an underlying metaphysic in an increasingly fragmented world. In Literature, Modernism and Myth Michael Bell also examines the relationship of myth and modernism to postmodernism. Myth, Bell shows, is inherently flexible; it was used to justify Pound's totalizing vision of society which eventually descended into fascism, and the liberal, ironic vision of human existence Joyce and Mann expressed. Those theorists who present myth as another form of mystification, a search for false origins, ignore its use by modernists to emphasise the ultimate contingency of all values. This anti-foundational element, Bell claims, enables myth to act as a corrective to the claims of ideological critique. Bell shows how postmodern concerns with political and social responsibility, and the role literature plays in formulating this, have in fact been inherited from modernism. Cover Half-title Title Copyright Contents Introduction I 1 Myth in the age of the world view Myth, religion and scienc Myth: romantic to modern Nietzsche and the aesthetic turn Myth and history Why Nietzsche? How the true world became myth II 2 Varieties of modernist mythopoeia W. B. Yeats: 'in dreams begin responsibilities' The final phase James Joyce's Ulysses: Trieste-Zurich-Paris 1914-1922 Consciousness and the world Modernism and science Time, music and spatial form Ulysses and Homer Language History and the superhistorical Ulysses: a critique of modernity? Bloom and the modernist self D. H. Lawrence: 'Am I out of my mind?' Language and myth Language and vision in cThe Horse-Dealer's Daughter' Language in the head 3 Countercases: T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound T. S. Eliot: Religion versus myth. Odysseus unbound: the Cantos of Ezra Pound The Poundian self 'Dove sta memoria?' 4 The politics of modernist mythopoeia Joseph Conrad and the 'Africa' within III 5 The break-up of modernist mythopoeia Novel, story and the foreign: Thomas Mann, Cervantes and Primo Levi The Joseph tetralogy and modernist mythopoeia Nietzsche and Cervantes Story and belief Thomas Mann and Primo Levi: modern to postmodern 6 Living with myth: Cervantes and the new world Alejo Carpentier: recovering the marvellous in The Kingdom of this World Myth and fiction in Gabriel Garcia Marquez' One Hundred Years of Solitude 7 Living without myth: deconstructing the old world Believing in the allegators: Thomas Pynchon and urban legend Ideology and confidence: flights of fancy in Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus IV Conclusion: ideology, myth and criticism Notes Select bibliography Index "The use of myth in Modernist literature is a misleadingly familiar theme. Joyce's appropriation of Homer's Odyssey and Eliot's of Frazer's Golden Bough are, like Lawrence's primitivism or Yeats's nationalist folklore, attempts to discover an underlying metaphysic in an increasingly fragmented world. In Literature, Modernism and Myth Michael Bell also examines the relationship of myth and modernism to postmodernism. Myth, Bell shows, is inherently flexible; it was used to justify Pound's totalising vision of society which eventually descended into fascism, and the liberal, ironic vision of human existence Joyce and Mann expressed. Those theorists who present myth as another form of mystification, a search for false origins, ignore its use by modernists to emphasise the ultimate contingency of all values. This anti-foundational element, Bell claims, enables myth to act as a corrective to the claims of ideological critique. Bell shows how postmodern concerns with political and social responsibility, and the role literature plays in formulating this, have in fact been inherited from modernism." -- Publisher's website Modernist literature attempted to discover through myth an underlying metaphysic to an increasingly fragmented world. In Literature, Modernity and Myth Michael Bell examines the relationship between myth, modernism and postmodernism. Bell shows how modernists used myth to emphasise the contingency of all values. This anti-foundational element, Bell claims, enables myth to act as a corrective to the political claims of ideological critique. He shows how postmodern concerns with political and social responsibility have in fact been inherited from modernism. Modernist literature attempted to discover through myth an underlying metaphysic to an increasingly fragmented world. In Literature, Modernism and Myth, Michael Bell examines the relationship among myth, modernism and postmodernism. Bell shows how modernists used myth to emphasize the contingency of all values. This anti-foundational element, Bell claims, enables myth to act as a corrective to the political claims of ideological critique. He shows how postmodern concerns with political and social responsibility have in fact been inherited from modernism. Martin Heidegger described modernity as the 'age of the world picture': The expressions 'world picture of the modern age' and 'modern world picture' both mean the same thing and both assume something that never could have been before, namely, a medieval world picture and an ancient world picture. Literature, Modernism and Myth is a study of the use of myth by modernists, and its relationship to contemporary notions of postmodernity Michael Bell. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 247-256) And Index.