Modernism, Music and the Politics of Aesthetics - Paperback

by Gemma Moss (Author)

Using an approach to music informed by T. W. Adorno, this book examines the real-world, political significance of seemingly abstracted things like musical and literary forms. Re-assessing music in James Joyce, Ezra Pound and Sylvia Townsend Warner, this book re-shapes temporal, aesthetic and political understandings of modernism, by arguing that music plays a crucial role in ongoing attempts to investigate language, rational thought and ideology using aesthetic forms.

Back Jacket

'Taking up longstanding debates on the politics of modernist aesthetics, Gemma Moss frames her lines of inquiry brilliantly through Adorno. Her understanding of music is crucial to her breakthrough understandings. This is a book that will make a significant difference in our reading and listening to modernism at work in the world.' Vincent Sherry, Washington University in St Louis An interdisciplinary account of the political importance of music in modernist literature Using an approach to music informed by T. W. Adorno, this book examines the real-world, political significance of seemingly abstracted things like musical and literary forms. Re-assessing music in James Joyce, Ezra Pound and Sylvia Townsend Warner, this book re-shapes temporal, aesthetic and political understandings of modernism, by arguing that music plays a crucial role in ongoing attempts to investigate language, rational thought and ideology using aesthetic forms. Gemma Moss is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Birmingham City University. Cover image: Beth Louise Halstead, original screen print from 'Circle Series', 2012 (c) Beth Louise Halstead Cover design: [EUP logo] edinburghuniversitypress.com ISBN Barcode

Author Biography

Gemma Moss is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Birmingham City University. She has published on music in Ford Madox Ford, E. M. Forster, D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf, and is editor of E. M. Forster's first novel Where Angels Fear to Tread for the Cambridge Edition of the Fiction of E. M. Forster, which is due for publication in 2024.