Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies – serie

As befits so notoriously ambiguous a term, 'modernism' may be studied in a wide variety of contexts. The term embraces subjects ranging from the new architectural practices of Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius, the innovative art of painters as diverse as Monet and Kandinsky, the drama of Strindberg and Jarry, the poetry of Ezra Pound and Wallace Stevens, the fiction of Joseph Conrad, William Faulkner and Gertrude Stein. This collection of resources provides readers with access to major debates relating to modernism as a set of aesthetic practices and as a product of (late) modernity.This collection offers an overview of the history of modernism as a critical concept in Anglo-American literary criticism from the 1890s to the present day. The emphasis is on the main currents of critical debate relating to Anglo-American modernism and the contents have been organised chronologically and are presented in their entirety without editorial matter, allowing readers to access the debates about Anglo-American modernism from a given epoch.These volume demonstrate that, far from being a reactionary or monolithic field, modernism was a richly diverse area of cultural activity and remains a dynamic field of critical inquiry. One of the main ways in which the collection seeks to offer this corrective is in its attention to the relationship between modernism and popular culture.

In the last two decades criticism of Gothic fiction has been transformed from a scholarly backwater, interesting itself in literary curiosities, to a wave of wide-ranging critical investigations collectively convinced of the significance, scope and centrality of the genre.Embracing recent developments in critical theory and practice, work on Gothic has been able to engage systematically and penetratingly with issues of gender, history, race and politics, and so significantly extend the parameters of the field.This collection brings together key works which convey the breadth of what is understood to be Gothic, and the ways in which it has produced, reinforced and undermined received ideas about literature and culture. In addition to its interests in the late eighteenth-century origins of the form, this collection aims to anthologise what it takes to be path-breaking essays on most aspects of Gothic production, including some of its nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first century manifestations across a broad range of cultural media.Titles already available in this series include Postcolonialism (2000, 5 volumes, £625) and Feminism (2000, 4 volumes, £525). Forthcoming titles include Urban Culture (September 2004, 4 volumes, £475) and Folklore (2005, 5 volumes, c.£475).

The academic study of folklore is a worldwide, interdisciplinary field spanning the humanities and the social sciences. It is very much tied to nationalism and national identity and for this reason it has often been the smaller countries that have led the way in terms of providing theory and method. There are many significant articles, mostly written by European folklorists, which remain essentially unavailable to most folklore students. Many appear in periodicals, which are not readily available, such as fabula (folktale studies) and proverbium (proverb studies). This set of volumes provides students and researchers with a comprehensive collection of articles covering the principal theoretical and methodological concepts.

Modernism, whether seen as a period designation, a manifestation of formal experimentation, or an aspect of modernity, has since its inception been marked, consciously or unconsciously, by gender. The dates 1890-1940, typically accepted as encompassing the modernist period, coincide with the first wave of feminism and its educational, suffragist, socialist, and professional agendas. Feminist activism and ideology of the period, as well as reactions against them, made gender a field of contention, sometimes labelled the "sex wars." The long shadow left by the Oscar Wilde trials, and the flourishing of gay and lesbian cultures, particularly in the urban centres of modernism in the teens and twenties, also queered normative notions of masculinity and femininity. In response to global consumer culture, diverse images of the modern girl emerged, also putting conventional notions of gender to the test. The Harlem Renaissance had its own gendered politics and expressions, as did modernism’s venturing into and emergence from colonial situations around the globe.The discussion of gender in modernism arose in the 1970s, along with the second wave of feminism and the introduction of feminist theory and criticism to the academy. It challenged the ways that the modernist canon, and the experimental forms associated with modernism, had been fashioned as normatively male. Early on, various approaches to the exploration of gender were available, including the gendering of style available in French Feminist theory, psychoanalytic approaches, materialist feminism, and gyno-critical attention to women writers. Raising questions of gender concerning modernist texts had become an expectation by the 1990s. Debates about the adequacy of gender as the central concern of feminist theory have led to the useful concept of intersectionality, which heeds the ways that other social categories, such as race, class, sexuality, dis/ability, and global/colonial location, intersect with gender in creating the standpoint of an individual. Equally valuable are challenges to binary divisions encouraged by gendered oppositions, and the study of ways that gender is produced by culture or performed.

What is generally referred to as modern drama was an international development or movement centred in Europe and North America, a movement directed against many of the conventions and institutions of nineteenth-century drama and theatre. Between 1880 and 1960, a number of foundational figures broke with inherited dramatic conventions, instituted new forms of drama, and created different venues for performance. George Bernard Shaw and William Archer in England, Henrik Ibsen in Norway, August Strindberg in Sweden, Maurice Maeterlinck and Alfred Jarry in France, Gerhard Hauptmann in Germany, Luigi Pirandello in Italy, Federico Garcia Lorca in Spain, Eugene O’Neill and Gertrude Stein in the United States, and Anton Chekhov in Russia share, despite their considerable differences, a project of rupturing with the old and a belief in the new. Even though each national drama tradition can boast such a foundational figure, modern drama was at the same time an international movement. New plays quickly circulated through translation and new production techniques through touring companies and extended visits, establishing an international standard for modernism in drama.The four volumes that make up this new Routledge Major Work span the historical emergence and the continuing impact of modern drama on critical thought. By focusing on the origins of modern drama as well as on the narrative of its development, the collection is uniquely positioned to relate this historical period to current critical traditions. In terms of organization, the Major Work takes stock of the various critical traditions that have developed since the 1960s and that have fundamentally transformed our understanding of modernist drama and theatre even as these traditions have continued to draw on the original impulses of modern dramatists. It is an essential reference work destined to be valued as a vital research resource by all scholars and students of the subject.

Medieval drama, always a popular area of study, has enjoyed a surge of interest in recent years. This new Routledge Major Work now makes available for the first time both the canonical and the best cutting-edge scholarship in the field. Organized generically, geographically and chronologically, the collection brings together wide-ranging historical work along with significant critical formulations that explore newer approaches and issues.With a new introduction by the editor, a leading scholar in the field, to guide users through the volumes, Medieval Drama provides student and researcher alike with all the key writings on medieval drama in one convenient, unique reference resource.