In Modernist Women Writers and War, Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick examines important avant-garde writings by three American women authors and shows that during World Wars I and II a new kind of war literature emerged -- one in which feminist investigation of war and trauma effectively counters the paradigmatic war experience long narrated by men. In the past, Goodspeed-Chadwick explains, scholars have not considered writings by women as part of war literature. They have limited "war writing" to works by men, such as William Butler Yeats's poem "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death" (1919), which relies on a male perspective: a pilot contemplates his forthcoming flight, his duty to his country, and his life in combat. But works by Djuna Barnes, H.D., and Gertrude Stein set in wartime reveal experiences and views of war markedly different from those of male writers. They write women and their bodies into their texts, thus creating space for female war writing, insisting on female presence in wartime, and, perhaps most significantly, critiquing war and patriarchal politics, often in devastating fashion. Goodspeed-Chadwick begins with Barnes, who in her surrealist novel Nightwood (1936) emphasizes the actual perversity of war by placing it in contrast to the purported perverse and deviant behavior of her main characters. In her epic poem Trilogy (1944--1946), H.D. validates female suffering and projects a feminist, spiritual worldview that fosters healing from the ravages of war. Stein, for her part, in her experimental novel Mrs. Reynolds (1952) and her long love poem Lifting Belly (1953), captures her experience of the everyday reality of war on the home front, within the domestic economy of her household. In these works, the female body stands as the primary textual marker or symbol of female identity -- an insistence on women's presence in both the text and in the world outside the book. The strategies employed by Barnes, H.D., and Stein in these texts serve to produce a new kind of writing, Goodspeed-Chadwick reveals, one that ineluctably constructs a female identity within, and authorship of, the war narrative.

This book provides the first sustained study of women's literary representations of death and the culture of war commemoration that underlies British and American literary modernism.

In Modernist Women Writers and War, Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick examines important avant-garde writings by three American women authors and shows that during World Wars I and II a new kind of war literature emerged—one in which feminist investigation of war and trauma effectively counters the paradigmatic war experience long narrated by men. In the past, Goodspeed-Chadwick explains, scholars have not considered writings by women as part of war literature. They have limited "war writing" to works by men, such as William Butler Yeats's poem "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death" (1919), which relies on a male perspective: a pilot contemplates his forthcoming flight, his duty to his country, and his life in combat. But works by Djuna Barnes, H.D., and Gertrude Stein set in wartime reveal experiences and views of war markedly different from those of male writers. They write women and their bodies into their texts, thus creating space for female war writing, insisting on female presence in wartime, and, perhaps most significantly, critiquing war and patriarchal politics, often in devastating fashion. Goodspeed-Chadwick begins with Barnes, who in her surrealist novel Nightwood (1936) emphasizes the actual perversity of war by placing it in contrast to the purported perverse and deviant behavior of her main characters. In her epic poem Trilogy (1944–1946), H.D. validates female suffering and projects a feminist, spiritual worldview that fosters healing from the ravages of war. Stein, for her part, in her experimental novel Mrs. Reynolds (1952) and her long love poem Lifting Belly (1953), captures her experience of the everyday reality of war on the home front, within the domestic economy of her household. In these works, the female body stands as the primary textual marker or symbol of female identity—an insistence on women's presence in both the text and in the world outside the book. The strategies employed by Barnes, H.D., and Stein in these texts serve to produce a new kind of writing, Goodspeed-Chadwick reveals, one that ineluctably constructs a female identity within, and authorship of, the war narrative.

Women played a central role in literary modernism, theorizing, debating, writing, and publishing the critical and imaginative work that resulted in a new literary culture during the early twentieth century. This volume provides a thorough overview of the main genres, the important issues, and the key figures in women's writing during the years 1890–1945. The essays treat the work of Woolf, Stein, Cather, H. D. Barnes, Hurston, and many others in detail; they also explore women's salons, little magazines, activism, photography, film criticism, and dance. Written especially for this Companion, these lively essays introduce students and scholars to the vibrant field of women's modernism.

This book investigates the connection between women's writing about WWI and the development of literary modernisms, focusing on issues of gender which remain topical today. Drawing on a wealth of unpublished diaries and letters, the book examines the way in which the new roles undertaken by women triggered a search for new forms of expression. Blending literary criticism and history, the book contributes to the scholarship of women and expands our definition of modernisms.

Drawing upon medical journals, newspapers, propaganda, military histories, and other writings of the day, 'Modernism, History and the First World War' reads such writers as Woolf, HD, Ford, Faulkner, Kipling, and Lawrence alongside fiction and memoirs of soldiers and nurses who served in the war. This ground breaking blend of cultural history and close readings shows how modernism after 1914 emerges as a strange but important form of war writing, and was profoundly engaged with its own troubled history.

As authors and publishers, individuals and collectives, women significantly shaped the modernist movement. While figures such as Virginia Woolf and Gertrude Stein have received acclaim, authors from marginalized communities and those who wrote for mass, middlebrow audiences also created experimental and groundbreaking work. The essays in this volume explore formal aspects and thematic concerns of modernism while also challenging rigid notions of what constitutes literary value as well as the idea of a canon with fixed boundaries. The essays contextualize modernist women's writing in the material and political concerns of the early twentieth century and in life on the home front during wartime. They consider the original print contexts of the works and propose fresh digital approaches for courses ranging from high school through graduate school. Suggested assignments provide opportunities for students to write creatively and critically, recover forgotten literary works, and engage with their communities.

Modernist Women Writers and American Social Engagement explores the role of social and political engagement by women writers in the development of American modernism. Examining a diverse array of genres by both canonical modernists and underrepresented writers, this collection uncovers an obscured strain of modernist activism. Each chapter provides a detailed cultural and literary analysis, revealing the ways in which modernists’ politically and socially engaged interventions shaped their writing. Considering issues such as working class women’s advocacy, educational reform, political radicalism, and the global implications for American literary production, this book examines the complexity of the relationship between creating art and fostering social change. Ultimately, this collection redefines the parameters of modernism while also broadening the conception of social engagement to include both readily acknowledged social movements as well as less recognizable forms of advocacy for social change.

An unprecedented sartorial revolution occurred at the beginning of the twentieth century when the tight-laced silhouettes of Victorian women gave way to the figure of the flapper. Modernism, Fashion and Interwar Women Writers demonstrates how five female novelists of the interwar period engaged with an emerging fashion discourse that concealed capitalist modernity's economic reliance on mass-manufactured, uniform-looking productions by ostensibly celebrating originality and difference. For Edith Wharton, Jean Rhys, Rosamond Lehmann, Elizabeth Bowen and Virginia Woolf fashion was never just the provider of guidelines on what to wear. Rather, it was an important concern, offering them opportunities to express their opinions about identity politics, about contemporary gender dynamics and about changing conceptions of authorship and literary productivity. By examining their published work and unpublished correspondence, this book investigates how the chosen authors used fashion terminology to discuss the possibilities available to women to express difference and individuality in a world that actually favoured standardised products and collective formations.

Examines the biographical projects that modernist women writers undertook to resist the exclusion of their friends, colleagues, lovers, and companions from literary history.