Palacios González, Manuela

Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses

Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de La Laguna

MANUELA PALACIOS GONZÁLEZ / RESEÑA173THE ENGLISH MODERNIST NOVEL. Lá-zaro, Luis Alberto. El modernismo en la novelainglesa. Madrid: Síntesis, 2005.A critical analysis of Modernism raises morequestions than it can possibly answer, as the termremains to be elusive and the texts and writersthat it allegedly encompasses are heterogeneousand of enormous complexity. This difficulty hasnot deterred Luis Alberto Lázaro, who has ac-cepted the challenge to present, to the Spanishreaders, a conscientious introduction to theEnglish Modernist novel along with a completesurvey of the main writers and their literary pro-duction. His study is well structured, with sec-tions that are carefully balanced, and is writtenwith a fluent and accessible style, features all ofthese which render the Modernist movementmore tractable that it might look at first sight.El modernismo en la novela inglesa starts withan indispensable discussion of the social and cul-tural context of Modernism. That this movementtakes place in a period of crisis is by now a topi-cal assertion, but Lázaro provides, in more depththan is usual for literary analyses, a detailed ac-count of the social conflicts in the first four dec-ades of the twentieth century: the decline of theBritish Empire, World War I, the Irish question,the Russian revolution, the political tensions thatlead to World War II, the economic crisis, theproletarian unrest, the feminist movement, etc.This political and economic background is es-sential to understand the interests that are at stake,the writers’ ideological allegiances and the differ-ent representations of these conflicts in their nov-els. The excessive emphasis on the formal experi-mentation of these novelists, which we find inmost traditional approaches to Modernism, hasdrawn attention away from these writers’ involve-ment in the ideological struggles of the periodand has unfortunately constructed Modernismas an artistic movement that failed to connectwith the society that surrounded it. Lázaro takesissue with this false perception of the Modernistnovelists’ supposed lack of social commitmentand, on several occasions throughout his book,reminds us of the way the war, women’s rights,double moral standards, oppressive institutions,etc. determine the characters’ course of life.After his introduction to the historical con-text, Lázaro attempts to define the always elu-sive term of Modernism, its geographical areaof influence and the temporal frame in which ittakes place. What is Modernism? A period oftime? A literary movement? Lázaro opts for thesecond possibility although this choice entailsalmost as many risks as the former one. He dis-cards the definition of Modernism as a period,which would cover the first half of the twenti-eth century, because of the heterogeneity of writ-ers that published their work in these years.However, Lázaro admits that the considerationof Modernism as a literary movement must alsoacknowledge an enormous diversity among itspracticioners (27). As B. Elliott & J. Wallaceremark, “there is no innate or unproblematicmodernism” (2). These critics maintain that weshould not think of Modernism as an empiricalobject whose truth we can discover through care-ful analysis. They rather suggest that we thinkof Modernism as a discursive field, and one thatis constructed differently depending on the writ-er’s or critic’s values, gender, class, race, etc. Someof these discourses managed to become domi-nant thanks to their closeness to the centres ofcultural power —publishers, editors, patrons,etc.— and they produced a type of hegemonicModernism, predominantly formalist, whichwas perpetuated, for at leat four decades, due tothe establishment of English Studies at the uni-versities with a formalist, New Critical approachto literary analysis.A frequent point of debate in the study ofModernism is that of the difference betweenModernism and the avant-garde (Bürger;Poggioli), the latter actually resulting from move-ments like Dadaism, Surrealism and the Rus-sian avant-gardes, which challenged art as aninstitution and attempted to reintegrate it in thepraxis of life. Lázaro does not dwell on this as-pect, probably because the writers he discussesdo not belong, properly speaking, to these his-torical avant-gardes, no matter how radicallyexperimental they can get in some of their texts.When analysing British Modernism in a Euro-pean context, we feel the need to differentiate itfrom other fin-de-siècle trends like the AestheticMovement, Art for Art’s Sake, Art Nouveau, etc.14 RES Palacios González.PMD 19/05/2006, 12:11173MANUELA PALACIOS GONZÁLEZ / RESEÑA174However, I concur with those who do not findin British novelists the subversive stance of, forinstance, Dadaists concerning the role of art insociety.Once Modernism is defined and framed,Lázaro continues to present three broad stagesin it, with a first set of forerunners (H. James, J.Conrad, F.M. Ford, S. Grand, and M. Caird), asecond set with hegemonic writers (Lawrence,Joyce, and Woolf ), women novelists (D.Richardson, M. Sinclair and J. Rhys) and writ-ers with a political and social priority (E.M.Forster, W. Lewis, L.G. Gibbon). Finally, a thirdset deals with writers of later generations whowere deeply influenced by Modernist aesthetics(S. Beckett, M. Lowry, and L. Durrell). This se-lection of writers is comprehensive and respondsto recent debates about Modernism and the needto include neglected and peripheral writers for amore balanced evaluation of this artistic phenom-enon. One may easily find analyses of the workby James Joyce or Virginia Woolf, but it is notso common to run into discussions of FordMadox Ford, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, or MaySinclair in surveys of Modernist literary produc-tion. Lázaro is also especially attentive to recentcritical work that has recuperated the novels bywomen writers like Sarah Grand, Mona Caird,Dorothy Richardson, May Sinclair and JeanRhys. One must say that feminist configurationsof Modernism (Hanscombe & Smyers; Ben-stock; Gilbert & Gubar; Clark; DeKoven; amongothers) have been extremely active critical ap-proaches in the challenge of the formulations ofhegemonic Modernism. One might be temptedto include in Lázaro’s survey other women writ-ers of this period, like Agatha Christie or Eliza-beth Bowen, and question their idealization ofthe landowning class (Thompson).An additional merit, and not a negligibleone at all, in Lázaro’s study is his detailed recordof the various publication dates of the Modern-ist novels he discusses, the subsequent editions,the delays caused by censorship and the transla-tions available in Spanish. With regard to thislast aspect, one is favourably surprised with themeticulous registration of data regarding theSpanish translators and publishers in his quota-tions of fragments from several novels, whichconstitutes an important contribution to re-search on British Modernism as it traces its re-ception in Spain. Another important piece ofevidence of the thoroughness of this study is thefinal addition of several appendices of interestfor the common reader, with a selection of frag-ments from key texts of Modernism, an indexof proper names of writers and main charactersof their fiction, a glossary with definitions ofartistic movements and critical terms, a chro-nology of historical and cultural events and, fi-nally, a bibliography. The fact that this is thefirst book in Spain on the English Modernistnovel is a clear indication of the lack of generalsurveys of English Modernism in Spanish. Forthis reason, the bibliography included by Lázarocontains mostly references in English. However,for the benefit of those who cannot read Eng-lish, I would suggest the addition of the studieson particular modernist writers in the LetrasUniversales series by the Spanish publisherCátedra (Woolf, Dalloway, Olas; Joyce; Law-rence).MANUELA PALACIOS GONZÁLEZWORKS CITEDBENSTOCK, Shari. Women of the Left Bank: Paris,1900-1940. Austin: U of Texas P, 1986.BÜRGER, Peter. Theory of the Avant-Garde.Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1984.CLARK, Suzanne. Sentimental Modernism: WomenWriters and the Revolution of the Word.Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1991.DEKOVEN, Marianne. Rich and Strange: Gender,History, Modernism. Princeton: PrincetonUP, 1991.ELLIOTT, Bridget & Jo-Ann WALLACE. WomenArtists and Writers: Modernist (Im)posi-tionings. London: Routledge, 1994.GILBERT, Sandra & Susan GUBAR. No Man’s Land:The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twen-tieth Century. Vol. 1. New Haven: Yale UP,1988.HANSCOMBE, Gillian & Virginia L. SMYERS. Wri-ting for Their Lives: The Modernist Women1910-1940. London: The Women’s Press,1987.14 RES Palacios González.PMD 19/05/2006, 12:11174MANUELA PALACIOS GONZÁLEZ / RESEÑA175JOYCE, James. Anna Livia Plurabelle Ed. F.G.Tortosa. Madrid: Cátedra, 1992.LAWRENCE, D.H. Mujeres enamoradas. Ed. MaríaLozano. Madrid: Cátedra, 1988.POGGIOLI, Renato. The Theory of the Avant-Garde.Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1968.THOMPSON, Jon. Fiction, Crime and Empire.Chicago: U of Illinois P, 1993.WOOLF, Virginia. La señora Dalloway. Ed. MaríaLozano. Madrid: Cátedra, 1993.—— Las olas. Ed. María Lozano. Madrid: Cá-tedra, 1994.14 RES Palacios González.PMD 19/05/2006, 12:11175

The english modernist novel. Lázaro, Luis Alberto. El modernismo en la novela inglesa. Madrid: Síntesis, 2005

https://riull.ull.es/xmlui/bitstream/915/17387/1/RCEI_52_%28%202006%29_15.pdf

The english modernist novel. Lázaro, Luis Alberto. El modernismo en la novela inglesa. Madrid: Síntesis, 2005

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de La Laguna