Myth and the Making of Modernity: The Problem of Grounding in Early Twentieth-Century Literature by Michael Bell , Peter Poellner (review)

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(published in I912 in TheNew York Herald),to volume. These are the three main 'evolutionary' stages of the novel, but Jones also tells us about a short story ('Dynamite', later 'Explosives')planned by Conrad earlyon in his careerbut never writtenout, which helps towardsan understandingof the woman protagonistin the finalwork.Mainly, however, this chapterstressesthe differencesbetween serialand book, the cuts that show Conrad's new attitude to women readers in placing a woman at the centre of the book as protagonist, as well as a shift of stress from textualityto vision, a female mode of literaryperception, and hence consumption, which are the concerns of the two following chapters, 'Marketing for Women Readers' and 'Visualityand Gender in Late Conrad'. Chapter 8 ('Suspense and the Novel of Sensation')completesthe book, with a Conclusion. UNIVERSITY OF MILAN MARIALUISA BIGNAMI MythandtheMakingofModernity: TheProblem of Grounding in EarlyTwentieth-Century Literature. Ed. by MICHAELBELL and PETERPOELLNER. (Text: Studies in Comparative Literature, I6) Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi. I998. vii + 260 pp. Hfl. 80; $44. Most of these fourteen essayswere given as conference papers at Warwick'sCentre for Research in Philosophy and Literaturein I995. It must have been a divided occasion, to judge from this outcome. The clumsy subtitleis presumablyintended to cover as many topics as possible, but hardly points to a vital issue. One contributor,Marc Manganaro, conteststhe book'srationalewhen he writesthat 'as a force in modernity "culture"matters more than "myth". It is a greater master narrative for modernity, and postmodernity; it functions more powerfully in our age as a thing to thinkwith'. Severalcontributorsarenot at ease tryingto thinkwith myth, and one sensesthe effortrequiredto get out of myth and backinto modernity again. The essaysbasedon Germanculturalmaterialsdifferfromthosebasedon French theory. The discussions of nineteenth-century German thought are comfortable with the term mythopceia, and generate large-scale argumentsthat integratepast, present, and future, as Bianca Theisen does in her discussionof Schlegel, Novalis, and Hoffman. Maike Orgel finds a convergence between Tennyson's Idyllsand Wagner'sRingof such improbableinclusivenessthat one wantsto resist,not leastby pointing out that a poem that never liftsfrom the page cannot begin to qualifyas a Gesamtkunstwerk. When early Nietzsche, in Poellner's reading, characterized the aesthetic as the true metaphysical activity, he gave modernism the authority to transformthe unsatisfactoryreal,but left behind tensions that requireda change of direction in his thought. Poellner's discussion of wholeness ends unsatisfactorily distantfromthe aesthetic,however. By contrast, Freud, Lacan, and Barthes generate outcomes that are, in Gerald Siegmund's words, 'immune to dangerously compulsive and organicist notions of myth'. Modernistpoetry, read out of Adorno and Lacan by Rainer Emig, desiresa 'wholeness,control and totality'that is impossible,so that Pound's Cantos emerge as an 'excess of endless utterances'.Freedomfrom the authorityof myth is necessary but difficult to achieve, because myths turn up again, as 'micro-myths', in the smallestdetailsof poetry. (Emig'sdiscussionis marredby his invention of'Vorticist' poetry, not possible because Vorticismwas an art movement). As the big systems lose out to such decentralizingguerrillaactivityas this, Frenchtheory, plus Freud, emerges as the answerto Germanmyth criticism. (published in I912 in TheNew York Herald),to volume. These are the three main 'evolutionary' stages of the novel, but Jones also tells us about a short story ('Dynamite', later 'Explosives')planned by Conrad earlyon in his careerbut never writtenout, which helps towardsan understandingof the woman protagonistin the finalwork.Mainly, however, this chapterstressesthe differencesbetween serialand book, the cuts that show Conrad's new attitude to women readers in placing a woman at the centre of the book as protagonist, as well as a shift of stress from textualityto vision, a female mode of literaryperception, and hence consumption, which are the concerns of the two following chapters, 'Marketing for Women Readers' and 'Visualityand Gender in Late Conrad'. Chapter 8 ('Suspense and the Novel of Sensation')completesthe book, with a Conclusion. UNIVERSITY OF MILAN MARIALUISA BIGNAMI MythandtheMakingofModernity: TheProblem of Grounding in EarlyTwentieth-Century Literature. Ed. by MICHAELBELL and PETERPOELLNER. (Text: Studies in Comparative Literature, I6) Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi. I998. vii + 260 pp. Hfl. 80; $44. Most of these fourteen essayswere given as conference papers at Warwick'sCentre for Research in Philosophy and Literaturein I995. It must have been a divided occasion, to judge from this outcome. The clumsy subtitleis presumablyintended...