Reading Modernism's Readers by Tyson, Helen;

Short description:

Examines the scene of reading in modernism, psychoanalysis and popular novels from the early twentieth century

Long description:

Reading Modernism’s Readers: Virginia Woolf, Psychoanalysis and the Bestseller examines the scene of reading in modernist, psychoanalytic and popular writing from the early twentieth century. Focusing on the writing of Virginia Woolf, and reading her novels alongside writing by Marcel Proust, Sigmund Freud, James Strachey, Ethel M. Dell, Melanie Klein, Marion Milner, and others, this book challenges our prevailing critical assumptions about modernist reading. Reading Modernism’s Readers argues that the modernist scene of reading reveals some of our culture’s most powerful and enduring fantasies about the role of literature in psychic, social and political life. Reading modernism alongside psychoanalysis and the bestseller, this book aims not only to intervene in debates about modernism, but also to address its legacies in contemporary literature, and in the context of increasingly urgent questions about how—and why—we read today.

Table of Contents:

Acknowledgements

List of Illustrations

Introduction: Reading Modernism’s Readers

1. Modernism and the Childhood Scene of Reading

2. Strange Taboos and Detrimental Diets: Reading Ethel M. Dell

3. Reading The Waves, Reading You: Virginia Woolf and the Culture of Redemption

4. ‘Monsters within and without,’ or, ‘Forebodings about Fascism’: Marion Milner Reads Virginia Woolf

Conclusion: Reading Modernism’s Readers Today