Miranda, 21 | 2020, « Modernism and the Obscene » [En Ligne], Mis En Ligne Le 13 Octobre 2020, Consulté Le 16 Février 2021

Miranda Revue pluridisciplinaire du monde anglophone / Multidisciplinary peer-reviewed journal on the English- speaking world 21 | 2020 Modernism and the Obscene Scandales littéraires : le modernisme et l'obscénité Philippe Birgy et Aurélie Guillain (dir.) Édition électronique URL : http://journals.openedition.org/miranda/27682 DOI : 10.4000/miranda.27682 ISSN : 2108-6559 Éditeur Université Toulouse - Jean Jaurès Référence électronique Philippe Birgy et Aurélie Guillain (dir.), Miranda, 21 | 2020, « Modernism and the Obscene » [En ligne], mis en ligne le 13 octobre 2020, consulté le 16 février 2021. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/ miranda/27682 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/miranda.27682 Ce document a été généré automatiquement le 16 février 2021. Miranda is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. 1 SOMMAIRE Modernism and the Obscene Introduction Philippe Birgy et Aurélie Guillain Disinterest and Disruption: The Picture of Dorian Gray and the Modernist Aesthetics of the Obscene Kevin Kennedy “Obscene and touching”–the tainted aesthetic of Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood Margaret Gillespie “Show! Hide! Show!”: High Modernism and the Lure of the Obscene Olivier Hercend Staging the Obscene in A Glastonbury Romance (1932) by John Cowper Powys Florence Marie Ezra Pound’s Representations of Sexual Intercourse and the Female Genitalia in The Cantos Emilie Georges Against “the Censor’s Scythe”: Mina Loy, Djuna Barnes, and Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven Yasna Bozhkova The Challenge of Taking Sides: Virtue as Corruption in Joyce’s Ulysses Philippe Birgy Prospero's Island ‘The resonance of the music’ in Resistance, Novel (Sheers, 2007) and Film (Gupta, 2011) Annelie Fitzgerald Ariel's Corner Theater “It’s Time for the System to be Refigured”: An Interview with Playwright Marcus Scott Interview Raphaëlle Tchamitchian Jane Eyre, National Theatre at Home during Lockdown Critique de spectacle / Performance review Céline Savatier-Lahondès Miranda, 21 | 2020 2 « Découvrir et partager » : Entretien avec Nicole Birmann Bloom, Chargée de mission, arts de la scène, au service culturel de l’ambassade de France à New York. Entretien Emeline Jouve The Tempest (2020) by Creation Theatre: Live in your Living Room Performance Review Heidi Lucja Liedke Times of Contagion: The Social(ist) Politics of Plague in Naomi Wallace’s One Flea Spare Essay Laura Michiels Autour de Sarah Kane par les élèves de l’École de la Comédie de Saint-Étienne Critique de spectacle/Performance review Samuel Cuisinier-Delorme Music, dance Une étoile, deux solos, trois plateaux : Hugo Marchand, entre Crystal Pite, Chopin et Bowie Nathalie Vincent-Arnaud Body and Soul de Crystal Pite (2019) au prisme du Prélude n°4 de Frédéric Chopin : quand un duo d’étoiles s’affranchit du poids des maux Franck Ferraty Krakauer-Tagg Duo : du souffle et des marteaux pour abattre les murs du confinement Cyril Camus Designing for Performing Arts – Interview de Lola Clavel, créatrice de costumes à Sydney (danse, concerts, comédies musicales) Nathalie Vincent-Arnaud American visual arts Exposition « Scott et Zelda Fitzgerald : L’été raphaëlois » Musée archéologique de Saint-Raphaël, 12 juillet au 30 septembre 2019.Commissaire de l’exposition : Anne Joncheray Elisabeth Bouzonviller N’importe où hors du monde : Susan Bee in Paris Barbara Montefalcone British visual arts Turner, peintures et aquarelles. Collections de la Tate Musée Jacquemart André, Paris, 13 mars 2020-11 janvier 2021. Sarah Gould Miranda, 21 | 2020 3 Recensions Isabelle Gaudy-Campbell, Céline Horgues (eds), Linguistique anglaise et oralité : vers une approche intégrée Saandia Ali Sophie Chiari (ed), Ecrire la catastrophe. L’Angleterre à l’épreuve des éléments (XVIe - XVIIIe siècle) Armelle Sabatier Helena Rosenblatt, The Lost History of Liberalism, from Ancient Rome to the Twenty- First Century Alexandra Sippel Antonella Braida-Laplace, Sophie Laniel-Musitelli, Céline Sabiron (éds.), Inconstances romantiques. Visions et révisions dans la littérature britannique du long XIXe siècle Sébastien Scarpa Hélène Ibata. The Challenge of the Sublime. From Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry to British Romantic Art Laurent Châtel John Burnside, The Music of Time: Poetry in the Twentieth Century Wayne E. Arnold Kei Miller, In Nearby Bushes Eric Doumerc Linda S. Ferber, Nancy K. Anderson (eds.), The American Pre-Raphaelites – Radical Realists Muriel Adrien Sarah Greenough, Sarah Kennel (eds. ), Sally Mann – A Thousand Crossings Muriel Adrien Monica Latham et Nathalie Collé (ed), Mark SaFranko : The Creative Itineraries of a "Renaissance Man" Brigitte Friant-Kessler Richard Pine, Lawrence Durrell’s Endpapers and Inklings 1933-1988. Volumes One and Two Isabelle Keller-Privat Miranda, 21 | 2020 4 Modernism and the Obscene Miranda, 21 | 2020 5 Introduction Philippe Birgy and Aurélie Guillain 1 Arguably, modernism is indebted to romantic aesthetics, notably to the postulate that all areas of reality, be they noble or ignoble, can be represented and given shape through an original gesture of artistic creation.1 Indeed, in many modernist works, new zones of experience, new aspects of corporeality and sexuality, have gained both visibility and aesthetic dignity through the invention of experimental forms, as excretory body functions famously did in Joyce’s Ulysses. In the process, modernist artists may have continued one important aspect of the romantic tradition, but they were also increasingly going against a vision of art in which the artist’s freedom of expression is a strict correlative of art’s civilizing function. An illustration of this vision is Matthew Arnold’s 1869 statement that literature and the arts are dedicated to the advancement of civilization: “culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world, and, through this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits, which we now follow staunchly but mechanically” (Arnold vii). In this statement, the matter is settled: the function of the artist is to watch over the development of modernity, to exalt its motives or denounce its vagaries, expunge its passions and correct its improprieties; in such a view, a claim to freedom of expression can only be justified because this expression is crucial to society as a whole. 2 Yet at the turn of the century, some modernist artists seemed willing to interrupt this fruitful agreement as they seemed to become increasingly absorbed in explorations of a disturbing interiority: Beckett, Cunard, Eliot, Joyce, H.D, Woolf, Lawrence, Pound, Yeats and before them, Beardsley and Wilde, were cases in point. H.G. Wells deplored Joyce’s “cloacal obsession”2 and E.M. Forster regretted his friend Virginia Woolf’s attraction towards the “dreadful hole of aestheticism” which caused her writing to drift rudderless, untied as it was to any moral cause (Forster 240). Even when representatives of the various modernisms and avant-gardes viewed themselves as the heralds and enunciators of modernity, as artists who were determined to accompany the movement of the modern age, to point out its ins and outs, illuminate its nooks and crannies, their critics could be prompt to reject that claim; their censors would argue Miranda, 21 | 2020 6 that these modernist explorations did not concern the average sensual man and that these artists spoke only about themselves, in their names only, with a strange pretension that placed them on the side of the vulgar and unworthy. To contemporary critics and censors, when modernist authors engaged in the indecent exposure of corporeal matters, these authors were being idiosyncratic, thus betraying the mission of the artist to enlighten the public about the contemporary state of society. If on the contrary, they were acknowledged as artists who indeed brought into light some aspects of the modern condition, then those aspects of the modern age were deemed inherently intolerable, unthinkable, better left entirely alone and preferably in a state of invisibility. In trials such as the 1921 obscenity trial incriminating the serialized publication of Joyce’s Ulysses in The Little Review, it seemed that the only way of making visible the revulsing and embarrassing pictures of contemporary life was through the process of their purgative expulsion, through their delegation to a perverse author who had to bear full responsibility for it. This was quite an unsettling consideration at a time when the figure of the author was already so controversial. 3 Obscenity trials are, of course, highly revealing of the evolution of free speech in the United Kingdom or the United States from a legal point of view: through the study of these trials, one can establish what, according to custom and the moral precepts of the time, must be banned from the public sphere and even held as illegal, i.e. as condemned to remaining secret, for even if they were merely exposed in private circumstances, such contents might still corrupt the mind. Of course, the definition of what counts as obscene is bound to fluctuate at the same time as standards of morals and customs. The question needs to be further problematized by considering that the criteria determining what was offensive (and what was not) were disputed ones and could hardly be considered as being standardized in the UK or the U.S. at the turn of the 20th century. In obscenity trials, the morality leagues

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