The Edinburgh Companion to Modernism, Myth and Religion

Until fairly recently, the ‘Authorized Version’ of cultural modernism stated that the secularizing trends of liberal modernity – and the resultant emphasis on irony, parody and dissolution in modernist artforms – had pushed religion to the edges of early twentieth-century culture. This Companion complicates this ‘Authorized Version’ by furnishing students and academic researchers with more nuanced and probing assessments of the intersections – and tensions – between religion, myth and creativity during this half century of geopolitical ferment. The Companion addresses the variety and specificity of modernist spiritualities; as well as the intricately textured and shifting standpoints that modernist figures have occupied in relation to theological traditions, practices, creeds, and institutions. What emerges is a multi-textured account of modernism’s deep-rooted concern with the historical and established forms of religion as well as new engagements with ‘occulture’ and indigenous traditions. In short, this Companion supplies a lively and original introduction to the aesthetic, publishing, technological and philosophical trends that shape debates about spirituality, community and self from the 1890s to the 1940s and beyond.