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A Sense of Shock The Impact of Impressionism on Modern British and Irish Writing

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This book is available in Oxford Scholarship Online - view abstracts and keywords at book and chapter level.

Related Categories

Literary Studies - Twentieth Century Onwards

Impressionism & Post-Impressionism

Literary Theory & Cultural Studies

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A Sense of Shock

The Impact of Impressionism on Modern British and Irish Writing

Adam Parkes

OUP USA

336 pages | 5 illustrations | 235x156mm

978-0-19-538381-2 | Hardback | 08 September 2011

Price: £40.00

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Groups its discussion of literary impressionism with developments in painting, journalism, and other media
Puts forward a new consideration of Woolf's response to problems of shock, trauma, and urban modernity

What did modern British and Irish literature have to do with French impressionist painting? And what did Henry James have to do with the legal dispute between John Ruskin and J.M.W. Whistler? Or Joseph Conrad with terrorism, the newspapers, and photojournalism? What links Walter Pater with Conrad's portrait of a genocidal maniac in Heart of Darkness?

Adam Parkes argues that we must answer such questions if we are to appreciate the full impact of impressionist aesthetics on modern British and Irish writers. Complicating previous accounts of the influence of painting and philosophy on literary impressionism, A Sense of Shock shows why this writing needs to be read in its historical context. In the hands of such practitioners as Conrad, Ford, James, Moore, Pater, and Woolf, literary impressionism was shaped by its engagement with important social issues and political events that defined the modern age. As Parkes demonstrates, the formal and stylistic practices that distinguish impressionist writing were the result of dynamic and often provocative interactions between aesthetic and historical factors. Ultimately, Parkes suggests, it was this incendiary combination of aesthetics and history that enabled impressionist writing to make a major impact on the literary culture of its time. This book will appeal to students and scholars of nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature, as well as the growing readerships for books that explore problems of literary history and interdisciplinarity.

Readership: Readers of PMLA, Modernism/Modernity, ELH, Victorian Studies; scholars who study twentieth-century British or Irish fiction, especially modernist fiction, in addition to scholars of the visual arts concerned with impressionism.

The specification in this catalogue, including without limitation price, format, extent, number of illustrations, and month of publication, was as accurate as possible at the time the catalogue was compiled. Occasionally, due to the nature of some contractual restrictions, we are unable to ship a specific product to a particular territory. Jacket images are provisional and liable to change before publication.

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A Sense of Shock

The Impact of Impressionism on Modern British and Irish Writing

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