Italian Futurism and the Development of English Literary Modernism

Robyn Jakeman

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781350327702
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Revisiting the place of Italian Futurism in English literary modernism, this book draws on a range of overlooked historical and archival sources to reassess how English writers engaged with Futurist ideas. It suggests that Futurism offered a compelling response to a cultural tension that had emerged in the late nineteenth century-the growing separation between art and life-and considers how English modernists adapted aspects of Futurist thought in order to navigate and reshape fin-de-siècle cultural discourses.

It begins with an analysis of Italian Futurism's transnational affiliations, its position in the European cultural field, and a reassessment of its reception in England, and goes on to re-evaluate three key modernist figures: the Poetry Bookshop proprietor and editor Harold Monro; the Vorticist impresario Wyndham Lewis; and the poet and artist Mina Loy. In doing so, this study not only offers an expanded account of the Futurist movement in England and Anglophone contexts, but also contributes to ongoing efforts to develop a more interconnected and nuanced understanding of early modernist historiography.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Historicizing Modernism
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• Editorial Preface to Historicizing Modernism
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 An imagined community: Futurism in England
• 2 ‘The beautiful Future’: Harold Monro, Poetry and Drama and Futurism
• 3 ‘A Futurism of place’: Wyndham Lewis’s Vorticism between Aestheticism and Futurism
• 4 ‘The pseudo Futurist’: Mina Loy, Futurist intuition and symbolic capital
• Coda
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright Page