Modernism and Democracy : Literary Culture 1900-1930

Anglo-American modernist writing and the modern mass democratic state emerged at the same time, during the period of 1900-1930. Rachel Potter charts the changes in the ideas of democracy and discusses the wide range of reactions to these changes. She argues that modernist poems were shaped by rapidly evolving and complicated ideas of democracy. - ;Anglo-American modernist writing and modern mass democratic states emerged at the same time, during the period of 1900-1930. Yet writers such as T. S. Eliot, W. B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, Wyndham Lewis, and Ford Madox Ford were notoriously hostile to modern democracies. They often defended, in contrast, anti-democratic forms of cultural authority. Since the late 1970s, however, our understanding of modernist culture has altered as previously marginalised writers, in particular women such
as Gertrude Stein, Djuna Barnes, H.D., and Mina Loy, have been reassessed. Not only has the picture of Anglo-American modernist culture changed significantly, but the understanding of the relationship between modernist writing and politics has also shifted.

Rachel Potter here reassess the relationship between modernism and democracy by analysing the wide range of different reactions by modernist writers to the new democracies. She charts the changes in the ideas of democracy as a result of the shift from liberal to mass democracies after the First World War and of women's entrance into the political and cultural spheres. By uncovering hitherto-unanalysed essays by a number of feminist writers she argues that in fact there was a widespread
scepticism about the consequences of mass democracy for women's liberation, and that this scepticism was central to the work of women modernist writers. - ;Potter's skilful illumination of details is arresting and thought-provoking...Potter's foray into this fascinating topic issues a welcome provocation. - Jason Harding, Modernism/Modernity

Keywords: PHILOSOPHY / General PHI000000