Publisher's Synopsis
Modernist Intimacies traces modern intimacy back to the first decades of the twentieth century, showing that modernism played a crucial role in its emergence. Intimacy can no longer be seen as an exclusively private, familiar sphere of life independent of socio-political realities, and the twelve newly commissioned chapters present incisive, original perspectives on intimacy as a vital dimension of modernist aesthetic and social practices. They engage topics from music-making, wartime radio broadcasting and transnational relations to diary-writing, sexual pleasure, queer religiosity and same-sex love. In attending to a wide range of print literary texts as well as other media such as church murals and sonic archives, the book also points to the resonance of modernist intimacies in our own time.
