The Oxford English Literary History, Volume X: 1910-1940: The Modern Movement by Chris Baldick (review)

Abstract

246 Reviews in reproduction. Lawrence's account of Loerke's appearance is similar to known portraits and photographs ofMoest. Bullen puts forward a convincing case forbeliev ing thatMoest's 'strong,but mainly unpleasant, impression on him, and his Godiva statuetteexemplified forLawrence something of theemotionally cold aloofness of early twentieth-century aestheticism' (pp.26I-62). This isa scholarly and challenging book, demonstrating an impressiveunderstanding of nineteenth- and early twentieth-centurycriticism and cultural developments. There are, however, a fewproof-reading lapses. The comparison of Spencer Gore's painting of the public viewing post-impressionist paintings at the StaffordGallery in I9II and Gauguin's Visionof the Sermon,forexample, ismade even more striking when, as here (pp. 222-23), the images have been transposed! KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON LEONEE ORMOND The OxfordEnglishLiterary History,Volume X: I9IO-I940: TheModern Movement.By CHRIS BALDICK. Oxford: Oxford University Press.2004.xvii+ 477PP.?32 (pbk ?I8.99). ISBN:0-I9-8I8310-0 & 978-0-I9-8I8310-5 (pbk 0-I9-928834-8 & 978-0-I9-928834-2). Chris Baldick believes that academic literarycritics generally misrepresent the period 1910-I940 as the triumphof the revolution thatwe callmodernism amovement that 'was in itsown timeaminority current' (p. 3). For Baldick thedominant tendency in the poetry of theperiod was 'not thatof "modernism" but of realism' (p. IO7),and he argues that it is misleading to seemodernism as a revoltagainst realism. So far as prose fiction isconcerned, he remarks that 'theopposite of realism isnotmodernism; it is,as ithas been forcenturies, romance, or fantasy,or fable' (p. 212). His case restson a narrower than normal definition of modernism: forBaldick literary modernism inEngland can be limited topoets Eliot, Pound, and Sitwell; novelistsRichardson, Hueffer/Ford,Joyce, andWoolf; and two 'polemical outriders' T. E. Hulme andWyndham Lewis (p. 399). He pours scorn on the recent tendency to discussW B. Yeats and D. H. Lawrence as modernist writers, arguing that 'both could be better understood as lateRomantics', and he asserts thatHenry James, Joseph Conrad, andW B. Yeats 'were not committed to radical disruptions of form' (p. 399). Such standpoints can be contested, but theyresult in a history thatdoes not focus in detail on a small number of writers, but surveyswith a broad sweep 'thework of about twohundred modern authors' (p. 14), including thosewho produced non-literaryworks. Some major authors are discussed at length,and well D. H. Lawrence, for instance but the main virtue of thisbook is its wide scope and itsdrawing of oftenunexpected connections between the canonical and the non-canonical. Baldick must surely be the firstto claim, forexample, thatP G. Wodehouse's giftfor making something freshout of anything stale 'meritsserious comparison with theJamesJoyce of Ulysses' (p. 298). This comes in a chapter entitled 'Modern Entertainment: Light Reading', one of the tenchapters devoted todifferentliterarygenres and subgenres thatconstitute the second of thevolume's threemain sections. The firstsection includes chapters on themodern literary market (useful informationon suchmatters as theNet Book Agreement, literary agents, and book tokens),modern authorship, and modern English usage. The final YES, 37, 2007 247 section, 'Occasions', includes chapters on England and the English, theGreat War, Childhood and Youth, and Sex and Sexualities. The volume also includes nearly fifty pages of author bibliographies, and suggestions forfurtherreading. Amongst Baldick's 'two hundred' are several little-readwriters whose work many readerswill be tempted to investigate. (One regret:Baldick devotes a single sentence to Ernest Bramah's blind detective character Max Carrados, but omits anymention of Bramah's wonderfully funnyKai Lung stories. They do not deserve their present neglect.) Baldick isgenerally a reliable guide to his chosen literary texts,although inevitably one can quarrel with some of his readings. It issurelynot thecase, forexample, that the reader of E. M. Forster's A Passage toIndia 'knowsAziz to be innocent from the start' (p. 323). And describing Noel Coward's Cavalcade as 'amedley of patriotic song, nobly endured military sacrifice,and flag-waving' (p. 320) ignores commentaries thatdetect a concealed and subversive vein of ironic pacifist critique in Coward's ostensible patriotism. Baldick's attitude to literaryvalue ispragmatic rather than thesis-driven. He advances no strongdefinitionof literary worth (although he notes that Angela Brazil's novels have none; p. 360), and no thesisconcerning the relationship between sociocultural change, biographical detail, and literaryproduction. Nevertheless, his book...