Modernism, media, and propaganda : British narrative from 1900 to 1945

Bibliographic Information

Modernism, media, and propaganda : British narrative from 1900 to 1945

Mark Wollaeger

Princeton University Press, c2006

Available at  / 16 libraries

Search this Book/Journal

Note

Includes bibliographical references and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

Though often defined as having opposite aims, means, and effects, modernism and modern propaganda developed at the same time and influenced each other in surprising ways. The professional propagandist emerged as one kind of information specialist, the modernist writer as another. Britain was particularly important to this double history. By secretly hiring well-known writers and intellectuals to write for the government and by exploiting their control of new global information systems, the British in World War I invented a new template for the manipulation of information that remains with us to this day. Making a persuasive case for the importance of understanding modernism in the context of the history of modern propaganda, "Modernism, Media, and Propaganda" also helps explain the origins of today's highly propagandized world. "Modernism, Media, and Propaganda" integrates new archival research with fresh interpretations of British fiction and film to provide a comprehensive cultural history of the relationship between modernism and propaganda in Britain during the first half of the twentieth century. From works by Joseph Conrad to propaganda films by Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles, Mark Wollaeger traces the transition from literary to cinematic propaganda while offering compelling close readings of major fiction by Virginia Woolf, Ford Madox Ford, and James Joyce.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix Preface xi Acknowledgments xxiii INTRODUCTION: Modernism and the Information-Propaganda Matrix 1 Making Sense of Propaganda: From Orwell and Woolf to Bernays and Ellul 2 Propagating Fictions: Wellington House, Modernism, and the Invention of Modern Propaganda 13 Modernism and the Media of Propaganda: Heart of Darkness and "The Unlighted Coast" 26 CHAPTER ONE: From Conrad to Hitchcock: Modernism, Film, and the Art of Propaganda 38 Manipulation and Mastery: Film, Novel, Advertising 42 From Novel to Theater to Film to Hollywood: In Search of an Audience 48 Killing Stevie: Death by Literalization/Death by Cinematography 55 Picking up the Pieces: Modernism, Propaganda, and Film 62 CHAPTER TWO: The Woolfs, Picture Postcards, and the Propaganda of Everyday Life 71 Postcards, Exhibitions, and Empire 77 Woolf and the Culture of Exhibition 84 Education as Propaganda: Bildungsroman, Sex, and Empire 88 Scripting the Body: Colonial Postcards and the Journey Upriver 93 Leonard's Jungle, Conrad's Trees 105 In Virginia's Jungle 111 Destabilizing the Ethnographic Frame and the Returned Stare 117 Empire, Race, and the Emancipation of Women 120 From Male Propaganda to Female Modernism 123 CHAPTER THREE: Impressionism and Propaganda: Ford's Wellington House Books and The Good Soldier 128 Ford and Wellington House 130 Ford's Critical Writings: Propagating the Impression 135 Impressing Facts: When Blood Is Their Argument and Between St. Dennis and St. George 145 Navigating the Pseudo-Environment in The Good Soldier 151 CHAPTER FOUR: Joyce and the Limits of Political Propaganda 164 Recruitment and the Art of the Poster 166 Reading Posters/Reading Ulysses 176 Maeve, Bloom, and the Limits of Propaganda 192 Identification, Cultural Predication, and Narrative Structure 200 Carnivalizing Propaganda: Bloom and Stephen in Nighttown 203 Reinventing Ireland: Ulysses and the Art of Dislocation 213 CHAPTER FIVE: From the Thirties to World War II: Negotiating Modernism and Propaganda in Hitchcock and Welles 217 War, Propaganda, and Film: Pairing Hitchcock and Welles 222 Orson Welles: Theater, Film, and the Art of Propaganda 229 Autonomy and Innovation: From the Studio to the MoI and CIAA 239 Citizen Kane and It's All True: Documentary and Propaganda 242 Bon Voyage, Aventure Malgache, and the Materiality of Communication 251 Coda 261 Notes 269 Index 323

by "Nielsen BookData"

Details

Page Top