Post-45 modernism and the problem of author/ity: Experimental anglophone fiction 1945-1975

Post-45 Modernism and the Problem of Author/ity: Experimental Anglophone Fiction 1945-1975 investigates the politics of English-language experimental fiction written in the wake of the Second World War. It wages two central arguments. First, it argues for a revised understanding of English modernism’s place within literary history. According to a standard scholarly narrative, modernism became the dominant English literary force of the interwar period, reached its zenith, then tapered off after the Second World War. Though modernism’s literary prestige remained, and it was canonized in academia, it retreated from the actual literary scene, and the world of English post-war literature, according to this narrative, was one which eschewed formal experimentalism. This dissertation contributes to recent scholarship that troubles this history by identifying a cohort of writers, whom I call post-45 modernists, continuing to experiment and utilize modernist style in the decades after the war. Second, I argue that these post-45 modernists shared a broad anti-fascist and anti-authoritarian political commitment which manifests in the form and content of their works. Whereas a number of the most prominent pre-war modernists flirted with or embraced fascism and believed in the efficacy of art to revitalize a broken modern society, these post-45 artists tend to share an uncertainty about the efficacy of art, a concern for the way that language can be used to legitimize power or obscure violence, a skepticism of authority in all forms, and an interrogation of the ‘author’ in ‘authority.’ This dissertation is divided into four chapters, each one focusing on a different post-45 modernist: Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), Anna Kavan (1901-1968), George Lamming (1927-2022), and B. S. Johnson (1933-1973). These chapters show how these writers developed shared formal and thematic features, such as textual failure, distrust of authority and fear of resurgent fascism, emphasis on complicity, depictions of madness, and formal experimentation that mark these authors as modernist, while still distinguishing them from pre-war modernist practitioners. Additionally, these chapters trace how such features were themselves informed by their author’s anti-fascist and anti-authoritarian political commitments.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2023

Author dc:creator

• Kimutis, Patrick J.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Gaedtke, Andrew
• Hansen, Jim
• Mahaffey, Vicki
• Rushing, Robert

• Beckett, Samuel
• Kavan, Anna
• Lamming, George
• Johnson, B. S.
• Modernism
• 20th Century Literature
• Fascism

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2023 Patrick Kimutis

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/121492

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F121492