Modernism and eugenics : Woolf, Eliot, Yeats, and the culture of degeneration
Childs, Donald J.200701UU
Book
Childs explores the impact of eugenics on the lives and work of such modernist writers as Woolf, Eliot and Yeats. In Modernism and Eugenics, Donald Childs shows how Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot and W. B. Yeats believed in eugenics, the science of race improvement and adapted this scientific discourse to the language and purposes of the modern imagination. Childs traces the impact of the eugenics movement on such modernist works as Mrs Dalloway, A Room of One's Own, The Waste Land and Yeats's late poetry and early plays. The language of eugenics moves, he claims, between public discourse and personal perspectives. It informs Woolf's theorization of woman's imagination; in Eliot's poetry, it pictures as a nightmare the myriad contemporary eugenical threats to humankind's biological and cultural future. And for Yeats, it becomes integral to his engagement with the occult and his commitment to Irish Nationalism. This is an interesting study of a controversial theme which reveals the centrality of eugenics in the life and work of several major modernist writers.Review: "Articles on individual modernist writers outline connections between their works and eugenical thought, but Childs' study is the first full-length treatment of this issue in relation to literary modernism, and as such is a valuable contribution to the field... a very worthwhile contribution to modernist study." Woolf Studies Annual "Child's book is at its best." Modern Fiction Studies "investigates the influence of eugenics upon the lives and works of three modernist writers... Childs makes a knowledgeable case..." English Literature In Transition 1880-1920.
Main title:
Modernism and eugenics : Woolf, Eliot, Yeats, and the culture of degeneration / Donald J. Childs.
Author:
Edition:
New ed.
Imprint:
Cambridge : Cambridge University Press : [distributor] Cambridge University Press : [distributor] Cambridge University Press : [distributor] Cambridge University Press : [distributor] Cambridge University Press (South Africa) : [distributor] Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Collation:
276 p. ; 23x15x2 cm.
Notes:
Paperback. Trade paperback (US).
Contents:
Introduction-- 1. Virginia Woolf's hereditary taint-- 2. Boers, whores, and Mongols in Mrs Dalloway-- 3. Body and biology in A Room of One's Own-- 4. Eliot on biology and birthrates-- 5. To breed or not to breed: the Eliots' question-- 6. Fatal fertility in The Waste Land-- 7. The late eugenics of W. B. Yeats-- 8. Yeats and stirpiculture-- 9. Yeats and The Sexual Question-- Notes-- Index.
Biography/History:
Donald Childs is Associate Professor in the English Department at the University of Ottawa.
ISBN:
9780521033305 (pbk)0521033306 (pbk)
Dewey class:
820.911209041
Language:
English
Subject:
Index terms:
English literature--20th century--History and criticism
BRN:
127382