Modernism and Eugenics: Woolf, Eliot, Yeats, and the Culture of Degeneration

by Donald J. Childs

Overview

In Modernism and Eugenics, Donald Childs reveals how Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, and W.B. Yeats believed in eugenics, the science of racial improvement, and adapted this scientific discourse to the language and purposes of the modern imagination. He traces the impact of the eugenics movement on such modernist works as Mrs. Dalloway, The Waste Land, and Yeats's late poetry and early plays. This is an original study of a controversial theme which reveals the centrality of eugenics in the life and work of several major modernist writers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521806015
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	09/06/2001
Pages:	276
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.91(d)
Lexile:	1640L (what's this?)

About the Author

Donald Childs is Associate Professor in the English Department at the University of Ottawa.

Table of Contents

Introduction; 1. Virginia Woolf's hereditary taint; 2. Boers, whores, and Mongols in Mrs Dalloway; 3. Body and biology in A Room of One's Own; 4. Eliot on biology and birthrates; 5. To breed or not to breed: the Eliots' question; 6. Fatal fertility in The Waste Land; 7. The late eugenics of W. B. Yeats; 8. Yeats and stirpiculture; 9. Yeats and The Sexual Question; Notes; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"Articles on individual modernist writers outline connections between their works and eugenical thought, but Childs' study is the first full-length treatment of this issue in relation to literary modernism, and as such is a valuable contribution to the field.... a very worthwhile contribution to modernist study." Woolf Studies Annual

"Child's book is at its best." Modern Fiction Studies

"investigates the influence of eugenics upon the lives and works of three modernist writers... Childs makes a knowledgeable case..." English Literature In Transition 1880-1920

From the Publisher