The literary magazine The New Age broughttogether a diverse set of intellectuals. Against the backdrop of the First World War, they chose to write about more than modernist art and aesthetics. Byclosely reading and contextualizing their contributions, Paul Jackson’s studyengages with the political and philosophical responses of literary artists tomodernity. Jackson demonstrates the need to interpret modernism not merely as anaesthetic phenomenon, but inherently linked to politics and philosophy. By placing the writing of a canonical modernist, Wyndham Lewis, against afigure usually excluded from the modernist canon, H.G. Wells, Jackson examinesfurther a wartime modernism that embraced socialist and political views. Thisreinterpretation of modernism provides a historicised understanding of thepoliticised hopes of artists promoting revolutionary forms of cultural renewal.Considering modernist writers’ relationship between politics, philosophy andaesthetics in the context of total war Jackson encourages newcultural-historical definitions of modernism. In addition this study providesthe first close analysis of cultural contributions from a leading wartime Little Magazine, tracing the radical modernist debates that developed in itspages.
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