Dr John Attridge

Research Summary

My main research area is modernist literature and culture, British, French and American. I am currently finishing a book on literary impressionism and the rise of professional society in Britain, dealing principally with Henry James, Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford. My new research project deals with the idea of trust in modernist culture, tracking how modernist writers - especially novelists - responded to shifts in the nature of social trust around the turn of the century. The concept of trust was comprehensively refashioned during the modernist period, as the classical liberal ideal of personal trust was challenged by the more impersonal trust conditions of mass society: trust between physically distant strangers, trust in abstract systems, mediated trust in public figures and so on. The main focus of this project so far has been Marcel Proust, and authors earmarked for future attention include André Gide, D.H. Lawrence, Elizabeth Bowen and Samuel Beckett. I have also done some work on modernist periodicals - namely Ford's English Review and the Paris magazines La Revue européenne and Les Ecrits nouveaux - and will do more one day.

Teaching

I mostly teach twentieth-century literature, and am especially interested in modernism and the novel. I welcome PhD and Honours supervisions on these and related topics. I have convened the courses "Jane Austen in Context" and "Modernism and Modernity", and currently convene "Modernism: Text and Screen."

Publications

Edited book

John Attridge and Rod Rosenquist, eds, Incredible Modernism: Literature, Trust and Deception (Ashgate, 2013).

Download the introduction (PDF) and list of contents (PDF)

Journal articles

"Nonsense, ordinary language philosophy and Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman", Modern Fiction Studies. In press.

"Two types of secret agency: Conrad, causation and popular spy fiction", Texas Studies in Literature and Language. In press.

"The Lesson of the Master: Learning and Cognition in What Maisie Knew", Sydney Studies in English 37 (2011).

“‘Human expertness’: Professionalism, Training and the Prefaces to the New York Edition”, The Henry James Review 32, no. 1 (2011).

“‘The Yellow-Dog Thing’: Joseph Conrad, Verisimilitude and Professionalism”, ELH 77, no. 2 (2010).

“Steadily and Whole: Ford Madox Ford and Modernist Sociology”, Modernism/modernity 15, no. 2 (2008).

“Detourism: Murray Bail's Photographic Fiction”, Journal of Commonwealth Literature 39, no. 3 (2004).

Chapters

"Ford and Conrad", in Ashley Chantler and Rob Hawkes, eds, Ford Madox Ford: An Introduction (Ashgate, in press).

"Episodic trust: self, society and sociology in A la recherche du temps perdu" in Attridge and Rosenquist, eds, Incredible Modernism: Literature, Trust and Deception (Ashgate, 2013).

"Introduction: modernism, trust and deception" in Incredible Modernism: Literature, Trust and Deception (2013).

“Eclecticism and its discontents: Les Ecrits nouveaux and La Revue européenne”, in Peter Brooker, Andrew Thacker, Sascha Bru, Christian Weikop, eds, The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines Volume 3: Europe, 1880-1940 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

“Murray Bail” in John Ball, ed., The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century World Fiction (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011).

John Attridge, “Liberalism and Modernism in the Edwardian Era: New Liberals at the English Review”, in Jason Harding, ed., Ford Madox Ford, Modernist Magazines and Editing (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010).

“‘We will listen to none but specialists’: Ford, the rise of specialization and the English Review” in Andrzej Gasiorek and Daniel Moore, eds., Ford Madox Ford: Literary Networks and Cultural Transitions (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008).

“‘I Don't Read Novels ... I Know What’s in ‘em’: Impersonality, Impressionism and Responsibility in Parade’s End” in Christine Reynier and Jean-Michel Ganteau, eds., Impersonality and Emotion in Twentieth-Century British Literature (Montpellier, France: Université Montpellier III, 2005).

Review essays

"The Saddest Tory." Review essay of Ford Madox Ford, Some Do Not..., ed. Max Saunders, No More Parades, ed. Joseph Wiesenfarth, A Man Could Stand Up-, ed. Sara Haslam and Last Post, ed. Paul Skinner (Manchester: Carcanet, 2010-11). Modernism/modernity 19, no. 4 (2012).

Review article of Peter Brooker and Andrew Thacker, eds., The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines, Volume 1: Britain and Ireland 1880-1955 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). Katherine Mansfield Studies 1, no. 2 (2010).

“Paris, capital of the nineteenth-century novel?” Review essay of Peter Brooks, Henry James Goes to Paris (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007) and Brigitte Munier, Quand Paris Etait un Roman: du mythe de Babylone au culte de la vitesse (Paris: Éditions de la différence, 2008). Modernism/modernity 16, no. 1 (2009).

Other publications

“Solid and Shipshape: Ford, Conrad and the ‘Idea of the Career,’” The Times Literary Supplement, March 6, 2009.

Other Information

Fellowships and Awards

Bruce Harkness Young Conrad Scholar Award 2010

Harry Ransom Center Fellow 2009-10