Forms of Modernist Fiction

Assesses the importance of innovative form in the novel from James Joyce to Tom McCarthy The formal innovations of modernist novelists have continued to reverberate to the present day, less importantly as a matter of imitation and more as a stimulus to further innovation. Focusing on the experience of the reader in engaging with a selection of these works from around the globe, this book argues that a rigorous attention to formal features is crucial in appreciating their achievement and in understanding the impact of the early modernists on the history of the novel. Among the authors discussed are Samuel Beckett, Zoë Wicomb, Eleanor Catton, Ali Smith, Eimear McBride and Kamila Shamsie. Joyce's Ulysses is given particular attention for its feats of formal invention and as an inspiration for many later writers. Among the facets of modernist writing explored in this study are the separation of content and form, the transgression of linguistic boundaries, the defiance of lexical and syntactic rules, the deployment of realist techniques to present the unreal, the political significance of literary form and the relation between formal innovation and affect. Derek Attridge is Emeritus Professor in the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York and Fellow of the British Academy. He has published thirty books, the most recent being, as author, The Experience of Poetry: From Homer's Listeners to Shakespeare's Readers (2019) and, as co-editor, In a Province: Studies in the Writing of South Africa by Graham Pechey (2022).