Forms of Modernist Fiction - by Derek Attridge

About the Book

Innovative literary form examined from the point of view of the reader's experience

Book Synopsis

The formal innovations of the modernist novelists have continued to reverberate to the present day, less importantly as a matter of imitation and more as a stimulus to further innovation. Focusing on the experience of the reader in engaging with a selection of these works from around the globe, this book argues that a rigorous attention to formal features is crucial in appreciating their achievement and in understanding the impact of the early modernists on the history of the novel. Joyce's Ulysses is given particular attention for its feats of formal invention and as an inspiration for many later writers. Among the facets of modernist writing explored are the separation of content and form, the transgression of linguistic boundaries, the defiance of lexical and syntactic rules, the deployment realist techniques to present the unreal, the political significance of literary form, and the relation between formal innovation and affect.

From the Back Cover

Assesses the importance of innovative form in the novel from James Joyce to Tom McCarthy The formal innovations of modernist novelists have continued to reverberate to the present day, less importantly as a matter of imitation and more as a stimulus to further innovation. Focusing on the experience of the reader in engaging with a selection of these works from around the globe, this book argues that a rigorous attention to formal features is crucial in appreciating their achievement and in understanding the impact of the early modernists on the history of the novel. Among the authors discussed are Samuel Beckett, Zoë Wicomb, Eleanor Catton, Ali Smith, Eimear McBride and Kamila Shamsie. Joyce's Ulysses is given particular attention for its feats of formal invention and as an inspiration for many later writers. Among the facets of modernist writing explored in this study are the separation of content and form, the transgression of linguistic boundaries, the defiance of lexical and syntactic rules, the deployment of realist techniques to present the unreal, the political significance of literary form and the relation between formal innovation and affect. Derek Attridge is Emeritus Professor in the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York and Fellow of the British Academy. He has published thirty books, the most recent being, as author, The Experience of Poetry: From Homer's Listeners to Shakespeare's Readers (2019) and, as co-editor, In a Province: Studies in the Writing of South Africa by Graham Pechey (2022).

Review Quotes

This important new work by Attridge is as ambitious in depth as it is impressive in breadth. [...] For students of modernism in general and Joycean scholars in particular, this book is indispensable.--G. E. Bender, SUNY Cortland "CHOICE"

With unsurpassed clarity and precision, Attridge leads us on a historically expansive tour of modernist innovation. Emphasising throughout the singular experiences of reading formal inventiveness, he offers an enriching account of how the affective and cognitive pleasures of criticism itself become intensified and diversified in response to some of the most challenging works of twentieth- and twenty-first-century fiction.--David James, University of Birmingham

About the Author

Derek Attridge is Emeritus Professor in the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York and Fellow of the British Academy. He is the author or editor of thirty books across a number of fields, including literary theory, South African literature, the history and forms of poetry and the work of James Joyce. His most recent publications are, as author, The Experience of Poetry: From Homer's Listeners to Shakespeare's Readers (2019) and The Work of Literature (2015) and, as co-editor, In a Province: Studies in the Writing of South Africa by Graham Pechey (2022), Literature and Event: Twenty-First Century Reformulations (2021) and The Work of Reading: Literary Criticism in the 21st Century (2021). He was the first recipient of the Robert Fitzgerald Prosody Prize and his book The Singularity of Literature won the European Society for the Study of English Prize for literary studies in 2006. He has held a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Leverhulme Research Professorship and fellowships at the Camargo Foundation, the Bogliasco Foundation, the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study, the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies, the National Humanities Centre and All Souls and St Catherine's Colleges, Oxford. Before moving to York, he held posts at the universities of Oxford, Southampton, Strathclyde and at Rutgers University, New Jersey. Temporary positions have included Visiting Professorships in the USA, Italy, France, South Africa and Egypt.