Mark Sandy

Kostas Boyiopoulos

Anthony Patterson

The 17 essays of Unsettling Presences investigate writers and texts chiefly stretching from 1890 to 1939, from both within and outside of the Modernist canon. They explore tensions, convergences, and differences between the dominant Modernists and lesser-known figures. Not only do they examine the alternative vision of populist writers such as Wells and Bennett, but also discuss figures who flirt both with cultural elitism and realism, such as E. M. Forster. More importantly, they showcase the work of obscure authors on the cultural fringe and/or of popular culture for the first time (e.g. Lord Dunsany and Margery Allingham, etc). The chapters cover cases on revising and recasting the tradition (Romanticism, Victorian Realism, and Aestheticism), cultural dialogues and comparisons. The genres and forms discussed include Realist fiction, lyric poetry, Symbolist drama, critical essay, heroic fantasy, popular and detective fiction, epistolary writing, parody, detective fiction, and painting. The chapters come to life and indeed cohere into a formidable whole with high-brow literary Modernism serving as the golden standard or point of reference against which the voices/texts being discussed are measured.

Unsettling Presences

Literary and Cultural Alternatives to Modernism

Yoonjoung Choi

We Speak a Different Tongue: Maverick Voices and Modernity 1890-1939 challenges the critical practice of privileging modernism. In so doing, the volume makes a significant contribution to contemporary debates about re-visioning literary modernism, questioning its canon, and challenging its aesthetic parameters. By utilizing the term "modernity" rather than "modernism", the 16 essays housed in this volume foreground the writers who have been marginalised by both their contemporary modernist writers and literary scholars, while exploring the way in which these authors responded to the tensions,

Anthony Patterson

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