Literature Subject Overview
Literary modernism is a truly global and plural phenomenon, playing out in multiple cultural paradigms, in various timeframes, and in response to diverse experiences of…
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Futurism
Futurism emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century as a movement that explicitly conceptualized the process of literary and artistic experimentation as part of…
Symbolism Overview
Symbolism is a late-nineteenth-century literary movement centred mostly around the work of poets such as Stéphane Mallarmé, Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Verlaine, Philippe Villiers de L’Isle-Adam,…
Shelem Yankev Abramovitsh 1835–1917
Above, Shelem Yankev Abramovitsh (1835–1917), commonly known by his literary persona Mendele Moykher-Sforim (Mendele the Book Peddler), is considered to be the founding father of…
Zinovieva-Annibal, Lydia Dmitrievna (1866–1907)
A Russian prose writer and dramatist, Zinovieva-Annibal (with her second husband, Viacheslav Ivanov) hosted the influential literary salon known as The Tower. Born in St…
Zweig, Stefan (1881–1942)
Stefan Zweig was a prominent Austrian-Jewish novelist, playwright and journalist throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Growing up in a Viennese upper-class environment of assimilated Jewry,…
Zabolotsky, Nikolai Alexeevich (1903–1958)
Nikolai Alexeevich Zabolotsky was a Russian poet and translator, and a member of the avant-garde absurdist group Oberiu (a modified acronym for Obedinenie Realnogo Iskusstva…
Santayana, George (1863–1952)
George Santayana—philosopher, poet, novelist, memoirist, and critic—was born in Madrid, the son and grandson of diplomats, and was brought to America by his mother in…
Arlen, Michael (1895–1956)
Michael Arlen, although now largely forgotten, was one of the most successful novelists of the 1920s. Born Dikran Kouyoumdjian in Ruse, Bulgaria, to Armenian parents,…
Alterman, Nathan (1910–1970)
Born in Warsaw, Poland, Nathan Alterman emigrated to Palestine in 1925 at the age of fifteen. One of the most prominent Hebrew poets of his…
Burroughs, William S. (1914–1997)
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, William S. Burroughs was a major figure of the Beat Generation. He is known primarily for his controversial novel Naked…
Henein, Georges (1914–1973)
The son of an Egyptian diplomat and Italian-Egyptian mother, surrealist writer Georges Henein spent his childhood between Cairo, Madrid, Rome, and Paris. It was in…
Molodowsky, Kadya (1894–1975)
Known as ‘the first lady of Yiddish literature,’ Kadya Molodowsky published continuously between 1927 and 1974. Molodowsky earned renown as a prolific poet, prose writer,…
Claussen, Sophus (1865–1931)
Sophus Claussen is considered one of the foremost Danish poets of the period spanning the 19th and 20th centuries. As a regular contributor to the…
Fogel, David (1891–1944)
David Fogel was born in 1891 in the town of Satanov in Podolia. In 1912 he moved to Vienna where he stayed until 1925. During…
New Musical Resources
New Musical Resources is a book written by Henry Cowell in 1919, unpublished until 1930. In it, Cowell proposes a theory of musical relativity in…
Vaginov, Konstantin Konstantinovich Wagenheim [ВАГИНОВ, КОНСТАНТИН КОНСТАНТИНОВИЧ ВАГЕНГЕЙМ] (1899–1934)
Konstantin Konstantinovich Wagenheim Vaginov was a Russian poet and novelist affiliated at different points with a number of literary groups in Petrograd/Leningrad. While originally born…
Lawrence, D. H. (1885-1930)
David Herbert Lawrence (1885–1930) was born in Eastwood, near Nottingham, England. He composed poetry, several travel books, expressionist paintings, short novels and stories, literary criticism…
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) was an American writer who burst onto the modernist literary scene in Paris during the 1920s and subsequently became one of the…
Eliot, Thomas Stearns (1888–1965)
Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888–1965) was an essayist, editor, playwright, poet, and publisher. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. He is perhaps…
Kafka, Franz (1883–1924)
Franz Kafka was born 3 July 1883 to a bourgeois family in Prague, the Czech capital that in the late nineteenth century belonged to the…
Bloomsbury
Bloomsbury is an area of Central London located in the Borough of Camden between Euston Road and Holborn. The neighborhood is home to the British…
Little Magazines
In the history of modernism, little magazines were often the first venues to publish unknown authors who are now considered the leading lights of twentieth-century…
Wilde, Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills (1854-1900)
Oscar Wilde was an Irish playwright, essayist, author and poet, and one of Victorian England’s chief proponents of Aestheticism. His works are often characterised by…
John Cage (1921–1990)
A leading figure in the twentieth-century avant-garde, John Cage was a prolific composer, writer, and artist. His early works show Schoenberg’s influence in their use…