Name: Modernism and Magic: Experiments with Spiritualism, Theosophy and the Occult
Author: Leigh Wilson (Author)
ISBN: 9780748627691

Modernism and Magic: Experiments with Spiritualism, Theosophy and the Occult book cover

Modernism and Magic: Experiments with Spiritualism, Theosophy and the Occult

Author(s): Leigh Wilson (Author)

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Publication Date: 14 Nov. 2012
Language: English
Print length: 256 pages
ISBN-10: 0748627693
ISBN-13: 9780748627691

Book Description

Across Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the ‘unseen’ returned in very particular ways: in a resurgence of interest in mysticism of all kinds, in the pursuit of occult knowledge and practices, and in the investigation of psychic phenomenon. While a number of scholars have described links between modernism and aspects of spiritualism, the occult, and mysticism, their discussions have left unanswered the question of what place the unseen world as a whole occupies. By looking at the occult, spiritualism and mysticism in one frame, this book argues that the unseen figures modernism’s yearning for that which is beyond the materiality of the text, whether that ‘text’ be printed words on a page, paint on canvas, or the effects of light fixed on a screen. The birth of modernism resides not so much in notions of aesthetic autonomy, resisting the degradations of mass culture, but in an attempt to reclaim textuality as a magical practice. This book provides the first overview of this broad subject, aimed at advanced level students and researchers, but it also offers an intervention in current critical debates on modernism and its understanding of the text. Features * The first broad overview of the subject. * Interdisciplinary coverage allows new connections to be made between literature, the visual arts and film. * Inclusion both of key figures (T. S. Eliot, James Joyce) and the less mainstream (Mary Butts, May Sinclair) extends the frame of inquiry and encourages comparisons. * Innovative approach to the relation between writing and the unseen in modernism provides the groundwork for further research in the field.

Editorial Reviews

Review

In this provocative and engaging book, Leigh Wilson finds magic at the heart of modernism. Looking afresh at its fascination with the occult, she suggests that modernist writers and filmmakers drew on magical thinking in their experimental art to create works that radically transformed the world they knew. Professor Helen Carr, Goldsmiths, University of LondonThis is a major contribution not only to our understanding of modernism’s fascination with the supernatural, but of modernism’s fundamental investment in modern magic. It breaks new ground by considering magic’s importance for filmmakers and artists, novelists and poets. It is the most important book on the topic in over a decade. –Dr Stephen Ross, University of Victoria

Wilson’s text provides an excellent rereading of modernism in the context of magic. It offers the reader wonderful background on a number of modernist authors and filmmakers. –Erin Hollis, California State University, James Joyce Quarterly, 50.4

The greatest achievement of this book lies in its opening up an area of intellectual activity that hitherto has been underestimated, under-respected, and even viewed as dubious, despite the fact that it is of crucial importance for the development of the arts and thought of the twentieth century (continuing to this day). –Thomas Steinfeld – Modernism/modernity, Volume 21, Number 1

From the Back Cover

Edinburgh Critical Studies in Modernist CultureThis new series of monographs reflects the range of recent research in modernist studies, contributing to the interdisciplinary and cross-cultural expansion of the field.Series Editors: Tim Armstrong, Royal Holloway, University of London and Rebecca Beasley, Queen’s College, University of Oxford‘This is a major contribution not only to our understanding of modernism’s fascination with the supernatural, but of modernism’s fundamental investment in modern magic. It breaks new ground by considering magic’s importance for filmmakers and artists, novelists and poets. It is the most important book on the topic in over a decade.’Stephen Ross, University of Victoria.‘In this provocative and engaging book, Leigh Wilson finds magic at the heart of modernism. Looking afresh at its fascination with the occult, she suggests that modernist writers and filmmakers drew on magical thinking in their experimental art to create works that radically transformed the world they knew.’Helen Carr, Goldsmiths, University of LondonExplores the interplay between modernist experiment and occult discourses in the early twentieth centuryWhile modernism’s engagement with the occult has been approached by critics as the result of a loss of faith in representation, as an attempt to draw on science as the primary discourse of modernity, or as a hidden history of ideas, Leigh Wilson argues that these discourses have at their heart a magical practice which remakes the relationship between world and representation. As Wilson demonstrates, the discourses of the occult are based on a magical mimesis which transforms the nature of the copy, from inert to vital, from dead to alive, from static to animated, from powerless to powerful.Wilson explores the aesthetic and political implications of this relationship in the work of those writers, artists and filmmakers who were most self-consciously experimental, including James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Dziga Vertov and Sergei M. Eisenstein.Leigh Wilson is Principal Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Westminster. She publishes on modernism and contemporary British fiction.Cover image: cover of ‘Transition’ number 18 November 1929 © The British Library Board. Shelfmark: CUP.400.a.30.Cover design:[EUP logo]www.euppublishing.com

About the Author

Leigh Wilson is Lecturer in the Department of English and Linguistics at the University of Westminster.

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