Table Of ContentTerrorism and Modern Literature
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Terrorism and Modern
Literature, from
Joseph Conrad to
Ciaran Carson
ALEX HOUEN
1
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford
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Acknowledgements
T as a Ph.D., and I am particularly grateful to
Gillian Beer for her support and careful supervision of the thesis. I am
also indebted to a number of other individuals: Bruce Gardiner, for
inspiring me to begin the project in the first place; Keith Carabine,
for discussions on Conrad; Rod Mengham, Trudi Tate, and Patricia
Waugh, for keeping me on track with meticulous criticism of the var-
ious drafts; Julian Murphet, for good arguments about theory; Geoff
Gilbert (my Paul Weller of modernism), for the talks and talks;
Margaret Scanlan, for opening up new literary lines of inquiry into
terrorism; and Matt Campbell, for edifying insights into Northern
Irish poetry and politics. Special thanks are due to the students of my
‘Terrorism and Modern Literature’ course who have consistently
opened my eyes to new possibilities of interpretation. I have also ben-
efited greatly from the editorial care offered by Sophie Goldsworthy,
Sarah Hyland, and Frances Whistler in seeing the book through its
final stages of preparation. Last and least, I should like to pay tribute
to Boots earplugs for providing me with a silence I could always
trust.
Part of Chapter first appeared as ‘The Secret Agent: Anarchism and
the Thermodynamics of Law’ in ELH: (). A shorter version
of Chapter first appeared as ‘Walter Abish: Plotting a Terrorism of
Postmodernist Fiction’, in the MHRA’s Modern Language Review, Year-
book of English Studies(). Grateful acknowledgement is made to
the editors for permission to reprint the material here.
I am also grateful to the following for granting permission to
reprint material:
Excerpts from ‘Enemy of the Stars’ and ‘To Suffragettes’ Copy-
right © by the Estate of Mrs G. A. Wyndham Lewis by permis-
sion of the Wyndham Lewis Memorial Trust. Reprinted from Blast
with the permission of Black Sparrow Press.
Excerpts from ‘The Crowd Master’ Copyright © by the Es-
tate of Mrs G. A. Wyndham Lewis by permission of the Wyndham
Lewis Memorial Trust. Reprinted from Blast with the permission of
Black Sparrow Press.
viii
Lines from Ezra Pound, The Cantos of Ezra Pound Copyright ©
, , , , , , , , , and by
Ezra Pound. Reprinted by permission of Faber & Faber and New
Directions Publishing Corp.
Letters of John Kasper to Ezra Pound reprinted by permission
from the Lilly Library at Indiana University, Bloomington, and the
Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library, Yale University.
Excerpts from How German Is ItCopyright © , by Walter
Abish, reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
and Pollinger Ltd.
Lines from ‘Once Alien Here’ © by John Hewitt, reprinted
by kind permission of The Blackstaff Press.
Lines from Tom Paulin, ‘Desertmartin’ from The Liberty Tree
© , reprinted by kind permission of the author and Faber &
Faber.
Lines from Ciaran Carson, Belfast Confetti© , reprinted by kind
permission of the author, The Gallery Press, and Wakeforest
University Press.
Every effort has been made to clear the necessary permissions. Any
ommissions will be rectified in future reprints.
Contents
INTRODUCTION
Figuring September
Definitions and Discourses of Terrorism
Literary Approaches to Terrorism
Fenians and Anarchists
. JOSEPH CONRAD: ENTROPOLITICS AND THE
SENSE OF TERROR
The Secret Agent: Anarchism and the Thermodynamics
of Law
Sublime Subversions: Female Terrorism and Popular
Victorian Fiction
Under Western Eyes: The Sense of Terror
. WYNDHAM LEWIS: LITERARY ‘STRIKES’ AND
ALLEGORICAL ASSAULTS
Refiguring the Avant-Garde: Vorticism’s Syndicalism
‘Enemy of the Stars’
Vorticism and Suffragette Violence
‘The Crowd Master’
‘Cantleman’s Spring Mate’
. EZRA POUND: ANTI-SEMITISM,
SEGREGATIONISM, AND THE ‘ARSENAL OF
LIVE THOUGHT’
Radio Assassination
Pound and Italian Fascism
Heidegger and the Institution of Terror
Heaven by Holocaust: The Pisan Cantos
Pound and John Kasper: A Guide to KKKulchur
‘Maintain antisepsis, let the light pour’: The Rock-Drill
and Thrones Cantos
Description:Looking at 100 years of terrorism in print--from Conrad on Anarchism in the 1880s to Seamus Heaney and Ciaran Carson on the "Troubles" in the 1980s--Terrorism and Modern Literature offers a fresh perspective on terrorism's cultural aftermath. In this first extensive study of the phenomenon, Alex Hou
