Louise Williams explores the nature of historical memory in the work of five major Modernists: Yeats, Pound, Hulme, Ford and Lawrence. These Modernists, Williams argues, started their careers with historical assumptions derived from the nineteenth century. But their views on the universal structure of history, on the abandonment of progress and the adoption of a cyclical sense of the past, were the result of important conflicts and changes within the Modernist period. Williams focuses on the period immediately before World War I, and shows in detail how Modernism developed and why it is considered a unique intellectual movement. She also revisits the theory that the Edwardian age was a difficult period of transition to the modern world. Finally, she illuminates the contribution of non-Western culture to the literature and thought of the period. This wide-ranging and inter-disciplinary study is essential reading for literary and cultural historians of the modernist period.

Louise Williams explores the cyclical nature of historical memory in Yeats, Pound, Hulme, Ford and Lawrence.
Reviews
"...Williams offers an attractive thesis constructed around masses of primary materials that make for fascinating reading." English Literature in Transition 1880-1920
"Modernisn and the Ideology of History is a valuable contribution to modernist studies and to British literary history." Journal of Midwest Modern Language Association



Book Information
ISBN 9780521120937
Author Louise Blakeney Williams
Format Paperback
Page Count 276
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 410g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 16mm