(De)forming the modernist canon

Taner Can explores the prevailing problems of literary periodisation and canon formation in the history of English literary modernism. In his comprehensive survey of the development of modernist literary studies, he demonstrates that the current conception of English literary modernism and its established historical accounts are largely dominated by the exclusionary aesthetic perspective and restrictive critical assumptions that the early modernist writers deployed to define their art. Can seeks to redress this negative and marginalising historiography of modernism through a reassessment of Joseph Conrad’s literary career and achievements.