Modernism in the magazines, modernism(s) in the Great War: Poetry, the Little Review, and Revielle
Date
2016
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Current scholarship recognizes that literary modernism emerged and circulated in magazines with broad readerships as well as in the non-commercial “little magazines” that figured so centrally in early bibliographic scholarship in the field. Historical recovery work in modern periodical studies is also uncovering a diversity of modernisms in the magazines. Yet the field of modernist studies still relies on a literary-centric critical paradigm that fails to acknowledge fully how political activism and a watershed event, the First World War, shaped the history of magazines that played key roles in the development and dissemination of modernism. “Modernism in the Magazine, Modernism(s) in the Great War” considers how the Anglo-American modern literary renaissance came of age in three wartime magazines: Poetry (1912-present), the Little Review (1914-1929), and Reveille (1918-1919). The history of modernism’s development was a journey through the extraordinarily difficult conditions and challenges of publishing during the war. The editors of these three magazines selected literature, reformulated their political agendas, and altered the material and business side of their magazines in response to multiple factors, including the shifting political landscapes, cultural climates, and economic struggles of the war. The First World War was certainly a watershed event for literary modernism, but within this broad narrative of historic rupture, the local histories of literary periodicals provide opportunities to grasp the many underlying factors that are crucial to a fuller understanding of how this formative moment shaped literary history.
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Keywords
Poetry, Little Review, Reveille, Magazines