Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2001 00:01:35 EST
Subject: Re: G.B.Shaw and Modernism



In a message dated 12/12/01, Lesley Hall writes:

<<<< seems to be situated in an very uneasy place in modernism. Where exactly 
would G.B. Shaw fall in the modernism? >>>>

<< I think (I don't have the volume to hand)  that Rebecca 
West's essay on The Uncles in _The Strange Necessity_ 
(1928) discusses Shaw along with Wells, Galsworthy and 
Arnold Bennett as the 'uncles' of her own, modernist, 
generation. There is also a little bit on Shaw and his 
importance to her generation towards the end of _Black 
Lamb and Grey Falcon_.>>

I would say that "Modernism" is attributed to Shaw in his time because he 
follows Zola, Ibsen, Strindberg and the Théâtre Libre in putting shocking 
slice-of-life material on the stage without the figleaf of the melodramatic, 
the operatic or the farcical.  England came late in this sort of theatrical 
"naturalism," and Shaw was in the lead.  A very young Joyce aimed in the same 
direction at about the same time.  I would add that "Modern" was attached to 
dance in large part because of the same change.


<<Shaw's arguments and campaigns against theatrical 
censorship presumably had a lot of resonance for other 
dramatists of the period.>>

Ditto George Moore's against the censorship of fiction; but theater was the 
top art in Shaw's heyday.


Lesley Hall
lesleyah-AT-primex.co.uk
website: 
http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah
 >>