This book challenges and replaces the existing view of Mallarm? mission to 're-possess' music on behalf of poetic language. Traditionally, this view focused on only the last fifteen years of the poet's life, and sprang from a belief in Mallarm? 'sudden awakening' to music during an all-Wagner concert in Paris, in 1885. Professor Heath Lees shows that Mallarm? early knowledge and experience of music was much greater than commentators have realized, and that the French poet actually began his writing career with the explicit aim of making music's performance-language of 'effect' the ground of his poetic expression. Integral to the argument is Mallarm? reaction to the work and ideas of Richard Wagner, whose impact on France came in two waves: the first broke during the tempestuous 1860s days of the Paris Tannh?er, while the second arrived in the mid-1880s, and gave birth to the Revue Wagn?enne. In refuting the critical literature that focuses on only the second of these waves, Lees shows that Mallarm?xhibited a highly informed Wagnerian background during the first wave, and that his grasp of the composer's gestural motives and flexible musical prose led him towards a new kind of self-expressive, gestural rhythm that aimed musically to reinvent poetic language. In support of this, the book examines closely what Wagner 'really' said in the prose works that were becoming known in Paris by the 1860s, in particular, Wagner's important French text, the Lettre sur la musique. It also re-examines Baudelaire's classic Wagner-brochure, and reveals its author's surprisingly firm grasp of Wagner's musico-poetic fusion. In musically informed commentary, Professor Lees surveys the four decades of success and failure that resulted from Mallarm? repeated attempts to draw out the musical gestures and resonances of words alone. In the process, he throws new light on many of Mallarm? best-known texts, hitherto judged 'difficult' by those who have failed to

Peter Nicholls provides original analytic accounts of the main Modernist movements. Close readings of key texts monitor the histories of Futurism, Expressionism, Cubism, Dadaism and Surrealism. This new edition includes discussion of the recent research trends, examination of developments in the US, and a new chapter on African-American Modernisms.

A psychoanalytic portrait of Flaubert with reference to the ideology of his period, the crisis in literature, and his role as one both influenced by all this and influencing the future of literature. -- Dust jacket.

The Body in the Text highlights the importance of the body in language and narrative and its impact on meaning and signification. Evi Voyiatzaki's insightful work reveals the highly metaphoric and symbolic texture of James Joyce's Ulysses, which, the author contends, resembles the organization of a living organism. The book examines how the living meaning of the word in Joyce's texts has inspired the work of three avant-garde Greek writers: Nikos Gavrlil Pentzikis, Stelios Xefloudas, and Giorgos Cheimonas. A valuable comparison between Joyce's work and modern Greek literature, The Body in the Text's comparative exploration of the body's functions within literary discourse offers new insight into language's metaphoricity and the physiology of writing.

Romance monographs ; no. 25 (er)