Modernism, Nationalism, and the Novel

In Modernism, Nationalism, and the Novel, Pericles Lewis shows how political debates on national identity inspired radical experiments with narrative form among modernist writers. He suggests that far from abandoning the political concerns of nineteenth-century realism, modernists used the emphasis on individual consciousness to explore ways in which the modern nation-state shapes the psyches of its subjects. Tracing this theme through Joyce, Proust, and Conrad, among others, Lewis claims that modern novelists gave life to a whole generation of narrators who forged new social realities in their own images.