Modernist Melancholia

'Synthesizing an impressive array of theoretical, historical, and literary material, Anne Enderwitz develops a new interpretation of two important modern novelists whose sometimes uneasy relationship was vital to both, but has not been sufficiently understood. Arguing that Conrad and Ford should be seen not as master and acolyte but as equally insightful psychologists and cultural critics, Enderwitz suggests compelling connections between Freud's much-discussed ideas about melancholia, the historical developments leading to the emergence of modernism (factors as diverse as Darwin's evolutionary theories, new technologies like the phonograph, and cultural phenomena like the celebrity writer and the 'great divide' between literary and popular fiction), as well as the formal innovations of these two novelists (their 'impressionism' and their narrative experiments with epistemological uncertainty).' - Paul Armstrong, Brown University, USA