Description
This book of essays on a number of major British and American writers highlights the extraordinary versatility of twentieth-century literature. It was a period during which not simply one or two, but all the major genres flourished. The editor illustrates this convincingly by selecting a range of poets, novelists and dramatists, and often by focusing on individual writers achievements in genres other than those for which they have received the most recognition. The novelist Thomas Hardy, for example, is considered as a poet; another major novelist, D.H. Lawrence, is treated both as a dramatist and as a literary critic, while Ernest Hemingway is discusses as a war correspondent. The special merit of this collection is that, unlike a great deal of modern literary criticism, it treats literature as a humanist project by concerning themselves with fundamental truths, these writers have produced works of abiding interest and value. The editor particularly demonstrates that even in the bleak landscape of twentieth-century literary wasteland, there are clear signs of hope. Hemingways belief that an individual may be destroyed but not defeated is shown to be fully upheld by major writers on both sides of the Atlantic.
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