ABSTRACT Title of Document: BRITISH MODERNIST ... - DRUM

Johnson mark an end to Britain’s neo-modernist movement of the 1960s. This
movement, as well as its antecedents in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s is, with the
exception of Beckett, who is often studied in the context of Irish, Continental, or
international literature, has received perhaps even less attention than narrative
middles, and it is another aim of this study to restore some of these writers to the
general discussions on modernism and British literature in general. While
experimental literature from many countries during and after World War II, whether
it goes under the label of late or neo-modernism, postmodernism, nouveau roman, or
postcolonial literature, has been the subject of a great deal of attention, this is not the
case for British experimental literature of the same period. Nevertheless, even in the
face of the collapsing British publishing industry, a number of authors continued to
write experimental literature under the explicit influence of the modernists. By
restricting its field of vision to British literature, this study opens up room for a more
thorough accounting of this British neo-modernism, which remained more often
within McHale’s definition of modernism than its counterparts elsewhere. Thus, the
British literature of the twentieth century is particularly fertile ground for exploring a
wide variety of modernist middles.
In addition to the goal of bringing attention to British neo-modernism, I have
been drawn to British modernism by the particular role of British nationalism in these
texts, as well as the position of Britain as a sort of middle space between the United
States and continental Europe. Pericles Lewis argues that national consciousness in an
era of international competition is a particularly potent force in modernist literature.
Lewis relates the force of nationalism specifically to a McHale-like view of modernist
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