Modernism and Cultural Conflict, 1880-1922

Ann Ardis questions commonly held views of radical modernism at the turn of the twentieth century. She depicts the "men of 1914," (as Wyndham Lewis called the coterie of writers centered around Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, and James Joyce) as only one among a number of groups intent on redefining the cultural objectives of British literature at the turn of the twentieth century. Simultaneously, Ardis reclaims key examples of non-modernist aesthetic effort associated with British socialism and feminism of the period. Ardis goes on to consider how literary modernism's rise to aesthetic prominence paved the way for the institutionalization of English studies through the devaluation of other aesthetic practices.