The era of literary modernism coincided with a dramatic expansion of broadcast media throughout Europe, which challenged avant-garde writers with new modes of writing and provided them with a global audience for their work. Historicizing these developments and drawing on new sources for research - including the BBC archives and other important collections - Broadcasting in the Modernist Era explores the ways in which canonical writers engaged with the new media of radio and television. Considering the interlinked areas of broadcasting 'culture' and politics' in this period, the book engages the radio writing and broadcasts of such writers as Virginia Woolf, W. B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, George Orwell, E. M. Forster, J. B. Priestley, Dorothy L. Sayers, David Jones and Jean-Paul Sartre. With chapters by leading international scholars, the volume's empirical-based approach aims to open up new avenues for understandings of radiogenic writing in the mass-media age.
Matthew Feldman is Reader in contemporary history at Teesside University, UK.
Henry Mead is a Research Associate at Teesside University, UK, and Bergen University, Norway.
Erik Tonning is Research Director of the Modernism and Christianity project at the University of Bergen, Norway. He is co-editor of the Modernist Archives series and the Historicizing Modernism series, both published by Bloomsbury.
Series Editor's Preface
Introduction
Matthew Feldman, Erik Tonning, & Henry Mead.
PART ONE: BROADCASTING CULTURE IN THE MODERNIST ERA
'Pub, Parlour, Theatre: Radio in the Imagination of W. B. Yeats'.
Charles Armstrong.
'Early Television and Joyce's Finnegans Wake: New Technology and Flawed Power'.
Finn Fordham.
'"I often wish you could answer me back: and so perhaps do you!" E. M. Forster and BBC Radio Broadcasting'.
Peter Fifield.
'Dorothy L. Sayer's: The Man Born To Be King. The "Impersonation" of Divinity: Language, Authenticity and Embodiment'.
Alex Goody.
'T.S. Eliot on the Radio: "The Drama is All In the Word"'.
Steven Matthews.
'David Jones: Christian Modernism at the BBC'.
Erik Tonning.
PART TWO: BROADCASTING POLITICS IN THE MODERNIST ERA
'Rambling Round Words: Virginia Woolf and the Politics of Broadcasting'.
Randi Koppen.
'J.B. Priestley: By Radio to a New Britain'.
David Addyman.
'"A mild flavour of defiance": George Orwell at the BBC'
Henry Mead.
'Radio Broadcasting in Fascist Italy: between censorship, total control, Jazz and Futurism'.
Massimo Ragnedda.
'Pound and Radio Treason: An empirical reassessment'.
Matthew Feldman.
'"Conquering the virtual public": Jean-Paul Sartre's La Tribune des Temps Modernes and the Radio in France'.
Alys Moody.
Afterword
Daniela Caselli