The thirteen essays in this volume range freely over the literature of the modernist period, from about the turn of the century to World War II. The contributors were invited to examine less familiar works—or aspects of the work—of major writers; to reconsider authors not usually thought of as modernist; or to explore received opinions about modernist theories and the assumptions that inform the literature of the time. Collectively the essays demonstrate, in fresh and varied ways, that reconsideration is not recapitulation, and that modernism is a phenomenon more supple, live, and approximate than we had imagined.
