ABSTRACT

In this exploration of the most innovative and iconoclastic modernist fiction, James J. Miracky studies the ways in which cultural forces and discourses of gender inflect the practice and theory of four British novelists: Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, May Sinclair, and D. H. Lawrence. Building on analyses of gender theory and formal innovation in Virginia Woolf's novels, this book examines Forster's queered use of fantasy, Sinclair's representation of manly genius in both male and female streams of consciousness, and Lawrence's quest for the novel of phallic consciousness. Reading each author's fiction alongside his or her theoretical writing, Miracky provides four diverse examples of how literary modernism wrestled with the gender crisis of the early twentieth century.

chapter |23 pages

Gender and Genre Matters

Virginia Woolf as Pioneer and Paradigm

chapter |42 pages

Pursuing (a) Fantasy

E. M. Forster's Doubled-Up Fiction

chapter |35 pages

The Sexing of Genius

May Sinclair's Experimental Novels

chapter |43 pages

From Consummation to “Remasculation”

D. H. Lawrence's Quest for the Phallic Novel