1913: The Cradle of Modernism

This innovative volume puts modernist literature in its cultural, intellectual, and global context, within the framework of the year 1913. This significant year was marked by many critical events and happenings, such as the first international recognition of non-Western writers when the Nobel Prize in literature was awarded to Rabindranath Tagore; it was also the last year of peace before the eruption of the First World War.

1913 examines the wide range of diverse artistic, literary, and political endeavours undertaken in this one year. For example, while Yeats and Pound were collaborating at Stone Cottage and discovering Japanese culture, Joyce was completing his autobiographical novel in Trieste, Du Bois was creating his Ethiopian pageant in New York, and Paris was resounding with the scandal caused by Stravinsky’s contested Rite of Spring. The book also explores and compares Apollinaire’s Alcools and Rilke’s Spanish Trilogy with Pound’s Personae, and Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country with Proust’s Swann’s Way. Engaging and insightful, this volume will encourage the reader to appreciate the breadth of activity that took place in this pivotal year, and its lasting influence.