David Ayers – författare

The English literature of the 1920s is commonly treated in terms of its position within European or Anglo-American Modernism. This book argues that the English literature of the period can be better understood when it is examined in the context of a more local social and literary history. Focusing principally on the novel, this book treats works that are regarded as modernist alongside non-modernist and popular forms, and demonstrates the engagement of these texts with a common context of social concerns, including sexuality, gender and class politics, Englishness, empire, and the cultural pessimism which informed the formation of English as a modern university subject. The book includes major new accounts of the best-known works of the period which challenge received wisdom on these subjects, including studies of D H Lawrence, Virginia Woolf and E M Forster. These accounts are set in the context of a variety figures who are now becoming better-known to the non-specialist, including Rebecca West, Wyndham Lewis, Aldous Huxley and Sylvia Townsend Warner. The First World War heralded the creation of the modern state and of a modern culture which in its essential outline remains with us. Rejecting a current trend to dismiss modernism as an elitist cultural movement, Ayers argues that the work of this period which most commands our attention remains that which most decisively articulates a critique of the emergence of modernity. The task of the critic is to disengage the utopian moment of works which seek to create a space for difference even where these works are mired in the confusions of contemporary ideology.* Concise accounts of the social and political contexts of the 1920s* Sustained and theoretically sophisticated accounts of key works by D H Lawrence, Virginia Woolf and E M Forster* Extensive treatment of a selection of other works, including contemporary best-sellers* A substantial bibliography

The English literature of the 1920s is commonly treated in terms of its position within European or Anglo-American Modernism. This book argues that the English Literature of the period can be better understood when it is examined in the context of a more local social and literary history. Focusing principally on the novel, it sets modernist works alongside non-modernist and popular forms, looking at the engagement of these texts with social concerns, including sexuality, gender and class politics, Englishness, empire and the cultural pessimism which informed the formation of English as a modern University subject.The book includes studies of D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf and E. M. Forster as well as Rebecca West, Wyndham Lewis, Aldous Huxley and Sylvia Townsend Warner.Key Features:*The texts and authors covered in the book coincide with what is taught on popular option courses, e.g. Modernism; C20th Fiction; D H Lawrence; Virginia Woolf*Ranges across modernist, realist and popular forms of literature*New approaches to the classic works of the period*Covers current themes such as gender, politics, Englishness and empire

Explores the impact of the Russian Revolution and League of Nations on British modernist culture 1917 was the moment in which a new sense of internationalism came into being under the impetus of the Russian Revolution and the formation of the League of Nations. Drawing on the responses of journalists and literary authors, David Ayers examines the work of lesser-known travellers and commentators alongside the work of major authors to show how these world-changing events impacted on British culture. We see how visitors to Moscow responded to meeting Lenin, how the Bolsheviks intervened in the British public sphere, and how cultural figures such as Leonard Woolf, H.G. Wells and T.S. Eliot, debated the League and the Revolution. Using Transnationalism theory and the work of Alain Badiou, Ayers demonstrates how a new age of transnational politics began and gave shape to the present. Key Features:* Presents little-known material dealing with the Russian Revolution and the League of Nations in Britain* Combines archival and theoretical approaches with reference to mainstream modernist authors* References contemporary discussions on transnational modernism and on ideas of Alain Badiou* Documents the hitherto neglected climate of ideas which shaped modernism after the Great WarKeywords: Modernism, Transnationalism, Russian Revolution, T S Eliot, Virginia Woolf , H G Wells

This short introduction to Modernism analyses the movement from the perspective of English and American literature. Provides a critical overview of some of the central texts of literary Modernism. Covers both established works and those that have only recently come to critical attention. Includes detailed discussion of major authors, including T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, Wallace Stevens and H.D.

This short introduction to Modernism analyses the movement from the perspective of English and American literature. Provides a critical overview of some of the central texts of literary Modernism. Covers both established works and those that have only recently come to critical attention. Includes detailed discussion of major authors, including T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, Wallace Stevens and H.D.

Literary Theory: A Reintroduction introduces the current state of theory by placing it in its social, historical, and institutional contexts. Focuses on the period preceding the ‘theory movement’ of the 1970s and 1980s as well as the aftermathAsks questions about how and why literary theory evolved in the 20th centuryDiscusses key figures such as F.R. Leavis, Raymond Williams, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler and Alain BadiouExamines the influence of a wide range of topics in the field, from the Cold War to the culture wars

Why should we care about marriage?There is a lot of confusion about the purpose of marriage today: outside the church as well as within it. Written by a distinguished Christian sociologist, Christian Marriage is a theologically rich, biblically robust, and sociologically informed treatise on the nature and value of marriage. Drawing on recent social science research, empirical data, and social history, Ayers paints a picture of marriage as an institution meant for human flourishing.Along the way, Ayers addresses such topics as:· Dating and selection of a spouse· The importance of premarital counseling· Sex and procreation· Mentoring and supporting unmarried believers· Divorce and remarriage· Current controversies surrounding premarital sex and same-sex marriageThough the book is academically and theologically informed, it is written with a pastoral heart. It seeks to provide a rich resource for pastors and counselors on a topic of supreme importance to a vibrant church and society.

"This book ... arms pastors and laypeople alike to face what is the most pressing issue of our day." -- Carl R. TruemanEquipping the church to recover from sexual confusion. In After the Revolution, David J. Ayers provides the Christian heirs of the sexual revolution a resource to understand their challenges and social context to find a way forward. Drawing on social sciences and history, Ayers traces recent worldview shifts in North America and Europe. The historic Christian understanding of sex and marriage has been supplanted. And sexual confusion has infiltrated the church, especially influencing younger Christians.The church can uniquely and compassionately support sexual faithfulness and flourishing, but we need to reject formulas, surefire methods, and judgmentalism. Instead, we must recover a positive vision for Christian sexuality, singleness, and marriage that is firmly grounded in God's word.

Voices and Visions: Interviews with the Contemporary English-Language Poets of Wales captures the perspectives of key Anglophone Welsh and Wales-associated poets who have emerged in the wake of devolution and Wales’s 1997 «yes» vote – or whose career profiles and development were consolidated in its wake. The post-1997 era has been a dynamic one – notably characterised by a striking gender shift, in which women are now at the very centre of Anglophone Welsh poetics. It has also been a period in which a number of idiosyncratic younger voices have emerged and established themselves both within Wales and further afield. Compelling and candid, these interviews examine poets’ practice and preoccupations, their native and elective poetic identities, their personal insights into a changing Wales, the prevailing conditions which may have enabled them, and their place within the wider firmament of British poetics. Voices and Visions: Interviews with the Contemporary English-Language Poets of Wales is a fascinating record of play, seriousness, ambition, and local and international interests from the point of view of some of Wales’s most significant contemporary poets. Poets included: Zoë Brigley, Sarah Corbett, Jasmine Donahaye, Jonathan Edwards, Dai George, Ian Gregson, Philip Gross, Meirion Jordan, Patrick McGuinness, Pascale Petit, Deryn Rees-Jones, Gwyneth Lewis, Rhian Edwards, Zoë Skoulding, and Tiffany Atkinson.

The September 1997 vote approving devolution, albeit by a tiny margin, was a watershed moment in recent Welsh history. This volume of essays considers the English-language poetic life of Wales since that point. Addressing a range of poets who are associated with Wales by either birth or residence and have been significantly active in the post-1997 period, it seeks to understand the various ways in which Wales’s Anglophone poetic life has been intertwined both with devolutionary matters specifically and the life of contemporary Wales more generally, as well as providing detailed scrutiny of work by key figures. The purpose of the book is thus to offer insights into how English-language poetry and contemporary Wales intersect, exploring the contours of a diverse and vibrant poetic life that is being produced at a time of important cultural and political developments within Wales as a whole.

It has often been argued that the arrival of the early-2 th-century avant-gardes and modernisms coincided with an in-depth exploration of the materiality of art and writing. The European historical avant-gardes and modernisms excelled in their attempts to establish the specificity of media and art forms as well as in experimenting with the hybridity of the materials of their multiple disciplines. This third volume of the series European Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies sheds light on the full range and import of this aspect in avant-garde and modernist aesthetics across all art forms and throughout the 9th and 2 th centuries. The book's contributions, written by experts from some 2 countries, seek to answer the following questions: What sort of objects and material, works and media help us to properly grasp the avant-garde and modernist "aesthetics of matter"? How were affects, emotions and sensory and bodily experiences transferred and transformed in the experiment with matter? How were "immaterial" things such as concepts of time changed in this aesthetic moment? What "material meanings" were disseminated in the cultural transfer and translation of objects? How did subsequent avant-gardes deal with the "aesthetics of matter" in their response to historical predecessors?

Utopian hope and dystopian despair are characteristic features of modernism and the avant-garde. Readings of the avant-garde have frequently sought to identify utopian moments coded in its works and activities as optimistic signs of a possible future social life, or as the attempt to preserve hope against the closure of an emergent dystopian present. The fourth volume of the EAM series, European Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies, casts light on the history, theory and actuality of the utopian and dystopian strands which run through European modernism and the avant-garde from the late 19th to the 21st century.The book’s varied and carefully selected contributions, written by experts from around 20 countries, seek to answer such questions as: · how have modernism and the avant-garde responded to historical circumstance in mapping the form of possible futures for humanity?· how have avant-garde and modernist works presented ideals of living as alternatives to the present?· how have avant-gardists acted with or against the state to remodel human life or to resist the instrumental reduction of life by administration and industrialisation?

The effort to go beyond given knowledge in different domains – artistic, scientific, political, metaphysical – is a characteristic driving force in modernism and the avant-gardes. Since the late 19th century, artists and writers have frequently investigated their medium and its limits, pursued political and religious aims, and explored hitherto unknown physical, social and conceptual spaces, often in ways that combine these forms of critical inquiry into one and provoke further theoretical and methodological innovations. The fifth volume of the EAM series casts light on the history and actuality of investigations, quests and explorations in the European avant-garde and modernism from the late 19th century to the present day. The authors seek to answer questions such as: How have modernism and the avant-garde appropriated scientific knowledge, religious dogmas and social conventions, pursuing their investigation beyond the limits of given knowledge and conceptions? How have modernism and avant-garde created new conceptual models or representations where other discourses have allegedly failed? In what ways do practises of investigation, quest or exploration shape artistic work or the formal and thematic structures of artworks?

Notions of crisis have long charged the study of the European avant-garde and modernism, reflecting the often turbulent nature of their development. Throughout their history, the avant-garde and modernists have both confronted and instigated crises, be they economic or political, aesthetic or philosophical, collective or individual, local or global, short or perennial.　The seventh volume in the series European Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies addresses the myriad ways in which the avant-garde and modernism have responded and related to crisis from the late nineteenth to the twenty-first century. How have Europe’s avant-garde and modernist movements given aesthetic shape to their crisis-laden trajectory? Given the many different watershed moments the avant-garde and modernism have faced over the centuries, what common threads link the critical points of their development? Alternatively, what kinds of crises have their experimental practices and critical modes yielded?　The volume assembles case studies reflecting upon these questions and more from across all areas of avant-garde and modernist activity, including visual art, literature, music, architecture, photography, theatre, performance, curatorial practice, fashion and design.