 | Modernism, Media, and Propaganda: British Narrative from 1900 to 1945 Subjects: English fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism; Modernism (Literature) -- Great Britain; Propaganda -- Great Britain -- History -- 20th century; Motion pictures in propaganda; 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. Mark Wollaeger is professor of English at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of Joseph Conrad and the Fictions of Skepticism , the editor of James Joyce's "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man": A Casebook , and coeditor of Joyce and the Subject of History . |
