Modernism, Empire, World Literature

'In this compelling book, Joe Cleary traces the Anglophone genealogy of contemporary world literature. His masterful and rich readings of key modernist works carefully locate them within their literary fields while showing them at the same time to be part of a mighty struggle of erstwhile provincials to take on the metropole and establish their literary, political, and economic preminence in the world. Truly world literature for the Anglophone age.' Francesca Orsini, SOAS University of London

'This book has a dazzling trajectory. It crosses the territories of the republic of letters and of modernism. It surveys the strategic power shifts of the last two centuries in the Anglophone world between English, Irish and American literatures. It analyses and compares many of the great literary works in which these transfers and transitions were made. Literary criticism and intellectual history are interwoven here with such subtlety that the boundaries that once separated them vanish in a  fusion that, long-needed by both, has at last been achieved.' Seamus Deane, University of Notre Dame

'This incisive work from Cleary (English, Yale) offers a new and innovative way of framing the discussion of modernism … This volume will interest scholars of both modernism and postcolonialism … Highly recommended.' A. P. Pennino, Choice Magazine

'It places Irish writing in a context that is at once world historical and local, enabling new discussions of Irish modernism and suggesting possibilities for further scholarly inquiry into its subsequent development within a literary world system increasingly centered in the American academy.' Liam Lanigan, New Hibernia Review

'Modernism, Empire, World Literature … showcases Cleary's capacity to wield his scholarship lightly, to craft a story out of his materials, a story designed to persuade as much as to theorize or problematize.' Patricia McManus, New Left Review

'Joe Cleary's rich new reading of anglophone modernism offers a kind of expert guided tour of canonical texts of anglophone modernism …' Christopher GoGwilt, James Joyce Quarterly