Date of Graduation
2014
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Type
MA
College
Eberly College of Arts and Sciences
Department
English
Committee Chair
Lisa Weihman
Committee Co-Chair
Sandy Baldwin
Committee Member
Marilyn Francus
Abstract
Questions of how literary modernism and literary realism can be distinguished from one another, particularly in the transitional period at the beginning of the twentieth century, are central concerns in the study of literature. I argue here that in E.M. Forster's 1913 novel Howards End, the 'monumentality' of the titular house is the key to its inclusion in the modernist canon. This monumentality is incomplete, I claim, and as such formally replicates the impossibility of comprehending or representing modern life. I conclude with a similar reading of Elizabeth Bowen's 1929 novel The Last September in order to demonstrate that this spatial dynamic of monumentality, which I posit as what I call a 'mediating texture' in the modernist novel, obtains beyond the confines of Forster's novel.
Recommended Citation
Weihl, Harrington, ""I feel that our house is the future as well as the past": Architecture, monumentality and form in the modernist novel" (2014). Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports. 7355.
https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/7355