Medieval Presence in the Modernist Aesthetic

In The Medieval Presence in the Modernist Aesthetic: Unattended Moments, editors Simone Celine Marshall and Carole M. Cusack have brought together essays on literary Modernism that uncover medieval themes and tropes that have previously been “unattended”, that is, neglected or ignored. A historical span of a century is covered, from musical modernist Richard Wagner’s final opera Parsifal (1882) to Russell Hoban’s speculative fiction Riddley Walker (1980), and themes of Arthurian literature, scholastic philosophy, Irish legends, classical philology, dream theory, Orthodox theology and textual exegesis are brought into conversation with key Modernist writers, including T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Samuel Beckett, Marcel Proust, W. B. Yeats, Evelyn Waugh and Eugene Ionesco. These scholarly investigations are original, illuminating, and often delightful.

"Cusack and Marshall’s collection is a very useful one that will help provide scholarly discussion on the topic of modernism by reinforcing the idea that modernist aesthetics reach just as much into the ancient past as they do into the future." - Kristen Marangoni, Tulsa Community College, in: Literature & Aesthetics 19 (1), 2019

Simone Celine Marshall, PhD (2005), University of Sydney, is Senior Lecturer in English and Linguistics at the University of Otago. She recently published ‘Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse and the Medieval Mystical Tradition of Pseudo-Dionysius,’ Literature & Aesthetics 27.1 (2017), 153-170.Carole M. Cusack, PhD (1996), University of Sydney, is Professor of Religious Studies at that university. She has published monographs including Invented Religions: Imagination, Fiction and Faith (2010) and The Sacred Tree: Ancient and Medieval Manifestations (2011).