Modernism, Modernity, and Arnold Bennett

Download or read book Modernism, Modernity, and Arnold Bennett written by Robert Squillace and published by Bucknell University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book delineates the unique role of Arnold Bennett in the transformation of the British novel from the aesthetic, psychological, and sociopolitical assumptions of modernity to those of modernism. Early in his career, Bennett believed that the rejection of inherited traditions and authorities that was promulgated by such champions of modernity as Darwin, Marx, and even Herbert Spencer, would culminate in an assertion of personal autonomy. Bennett eventually assimilated the modernist critique of modernity, which discovered (with the help of Freud and the First World War) an intractable human irrationality that expressed itself in the most apparently reasonable schemes for human improvement.