Book News: The Metrocolony in Modernist Writing

Modernism in the Metrocolony: Urban Cultures of Empire in Twentieth-Century Literature

BY CAITLIN VANDERTOP 

Cambridge UP, 2020

Hardback ISBN: 9781108835626

https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/literature/english-literature-1900-1945/modernism-metrocolony-urban-cultures-empire-twentieth-century-literature?format=HB

While literary modernism is often associated with Euro-American metropolises such as London, Paris or New York, this book considers the place of the colonial city in modernist fiction. From the streets of Dublin to the shop-houses of Singapore, and from the botanical gardens of Bombay to the suburbs of Suva, the monumental landscapes of British colonial cities aimed to reinforce empire's universalizing claims, yet these spaces also contradicted and resisted the impositions of an idealized English culture. Inspired by the uneven landscapes of the urban British empire, a group of twentieth-century writers transformed the visual incongruities and anachronisms on display in the city streets into sources of critique and formal innovation. Showing how these writers responded to empire's metrocolonial complexities and built legacies, Modernism in the Metrocolony traces an alternative, peripheral history of the modernist city.

BOOK NEWS is an online-only feature announcing new publications in modernist and contemporary literary studies. These announcements do NOT constitute an endorsement by the Journal of Modern Literature.

• Provides examples of interdisciplinary approaches to modernist literature, postcolonial studies and urban history
• Produces an innovative theoretical overview outlining the significance of peripheral urbanism to modernism, drawing primarily on theorists from the global South
• Intervenes in debates over the cultural, political and ecological legacies of colonial urbanism

Caitlin Vandertop is assistant professor at the University of Warwick. A former lecturer at the University of the South Pacific and research assistant at the University of Hong Kong, her work on modernism and colonial urban culture has been published in journals including Modern Fiction Studies, Textual Practice, Novel, Journal of Postcolonial Writing and Interventions.