Illegitimate Freedom: Informality in Modernist Literature, 1900-1940

Illegitimate Freedom: Informality in Modernist Literature, 1900 - 1940, is the first study of informality in modernist literature, discussing its relation to sensory experience, aesthetic presentation, ethical deliberation, and social attitudes. It examines works by Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, and W. H. Audens for nuances of informality, offering insights into Lockean liberalism, feminine writing, sublimity and domesticity, Sigmund Freud's arguments, and recent affect theory.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 180 pages
Publication date: 31 May 2023
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Illegitimate Freedom: Informality in Modernist Literature, 1900 - 1940

is the first comprehensive study of informality in modernist literature. In its introduction, the book distinguishes informality from intimacy, delving into its relationship with sensory experience, aesthetic presentation, ethical deliberation, and social attitudes within modernist works. It examines these works in detail, exploring the nuances of the term informality across its chapters in a thematic sequence. The first thematic chapter explores informality as a means of offering humor, interpretive freedom, and promiscuity as counters to self-absorption in the writings of Virginia Woolf. The second chapter examines feminine informality as a rebuttal to male priorities in liberalism, manifested in several short stories by Katherine Mansfield. The third chapter explores the contempt for colloquialism and intimacy, tinged with class-anxieties and crises of attitude, in the poetry of T. S. Eliot. The fourth chapter explores resistance to disgust in James Joyce's novels. The fifth chapter examines the fusion of irreverence, protest, and praise in the writings of W. H. Audens before 1940. The conclusion of the book considers the risks of informality through a discussion of what it calls inverted dignity.

The theoretical aspects of the book offer insightful perspectives into Lockean liberalism, the ethical dimensions of what Hélène Cixous termed feminine writing, the relations of sublimity and domesticity, Sigmund Freud's arguments on humor and melancholia, and recent affect theory. The study also engages with Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Nietzsche's views on disgust, linking them with modernism. This wide range of engagement makes this study relevant for scholars interested in literary studies, critical theory, and philosophy.

Weight: 330g
Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781032115481