Modernism and Morality : Ethical Devices in European and American Fiction

Annotation Modernism and Morality discusses the relationship between artistic and moral ideas in European and American literary modernism. Rather than reading modernism as a complete rejection of social morality, this study shows how early 19th-century writers like Conrad, Faulkner, Gide, Kafka, Mann, and Stein actually devised new aesthetic techniques to address ethical problems. By focusing on a range of decadent, naturalist, avant-garde, and expatriate writers between 1890 and the late 1930s, this book reassesses the moral trajectory of transatlantic fiction. Front Matter....Pages i-viii Introduction: Modernity and the Crisis of Morals....Pages 1-26 Front Matter....Pages 27-27 Decadence, Naturalism and the Morality of Writing....Pages 29-48 Books and Ruins: Abject Decadence in Gide and Mann....Pages 49-65 Front Matter....Pages 67-67 Extremist Modernism: The Avant-Garde and the Limits of Art....Pages 69-87 Moral Regeneration and Moral Bankruptcy: Conrad, Faulkner and Idiocy....Pages 88-107 Front Matter....Pages 109-109 American Expatriate Fictions and the Ethics of Sexual Difference....Pages 111-132 The Blind Impress of Modernity: Lorca, Kafka and New York....Pages 133-153 Front Matter....Pages 155-155 The Modernist Picaresque: Moralists without Qualities....Pages 157-178 Myths of the Magician: Klaus Mann, Thomas Mann and Nazi Germany....Pages 179-195 Conclusion: Liberating the Fear of Modernity....Pages 196-209 Back Matter....Pages 210-264 Modernism and Morality discusses the relationship between artistic and moral ideas in European and American literary modernism. Rather than reading modernism as a complete rejection of social morality, this study shows how early twentieth-century writers like Conrad, Faulkner, Gide, Kafka, Mann and Stein actually devised new aesthetic techniques to address ethical problems. By focusing on a range of decadent, naturalist, avant-garde and expatriate writers between 1890 and the late 1930s this book reassesses the moral trajectory of transatlantic fiction. Martin Halliwell. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 240-256) And Index.