Modernism and Literature: An Introduction and Reader/A Handbook of Modernism Studies

Where's Wallace? A Stevensian scanning the crowded pages of two recent state-of-the-art surveys of literary modernism may feel a bit like a toddler straining to spot the familiar round glasses and red-and-white-striped cap of the nomadic Waldo, perpetually lost within a succession of densely populated landscapes. The question of greatest interest to readers of this journal must surely be whether Stevens' omission from these books portends his long-term displacement from the canon and curriculum of modernist literary studies, or is simply an accidental byproduct of their editors' and contributors' scholarly investments. Instead of organizing his handbook around authors, movements, and genres, Rabaté chooses to highlight theoretical and conceptual topics: distinctions between high and low, "hard" and "soft"; race, imperialism, transnationalism, orientalism; the body, materiality, visual culture, fashion; ethics, affect, aesthetics.