{"product_id":"modernisms-whims-hardcover","title":"Modernism's Whims - Hardcover","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cp style=\"text-align: right;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/reportcopyrightinfringement.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003e\u003cb\u003eReport copyright infringement\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eBeci Carver\u003c\/b\u003e (Author)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThomas Hardy asks of the ghost stalking him: 'Whither, O whither will your whim now draw me?' Immediately tripping up on its own laid-out comma, then pausing to howl theatrically, and hedging its bets with a stuttering, archaic 'whither' that sceptically hovers between 'where' and 'whether', this line has already begun to worry about where it is going or being 'whim-drawn.' On the other hand, it enjoys its worry, over-performs the conundrum. It is a whim addressing a whim. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eBeci Carver's \u003cem\u003eModernism's Whims\u003c\/em\u003e is a book about whims; their tyrannies, arbitrariness, ultimate frivolity: how they may feel urgent for all their lightness, while still letting you play, letting you go, letting you off the hook. The book is at once a meditation on the whim as a phenomenon and an endeavour to track the specific (albeit necessarily intangible) literary whims of four modernist writers: Hardy, T. S. Eliot, William Empson, Elsie Elizabeth Phare. Moving counter to the otherwise professionalised spirit of modernism, these literary whims and their author sponsors are imagined to occupy a fugitive position within the broader movement, their progress dangerously silly. Carver situates modernism after whim's Golden Age in the mid-nineteenth century, at a literary-historical moment when authors were expected to know what they were about. Hardy's stalker ghost is on the run.\u003ch3\u003eAuthor Biography\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eBeci Carver, \u003cem\u003eSenior Lecturer, University of Exeter\u003c\/em\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eBeci Carver earned her BA degree, her MPhil and PhD at Cambridge University, all in the 2000s, and stayed on there for a four-year Junior Research Fellowship at Trinity College. After that, she moved on to a teaching fellowship at University College London, followed by a three-year Early Career Leverhulme Fellowship. Her first book, \u003cem\u003eGranular Modernism\u003c\/em\u003e, was published the year she began her Leverhulme. In 2016, she took up a one-year lectureship at the University of St Andrews, and in 2017, was appointed to a permanent lectureship at the University of Exeter.\u003cbr\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 198\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.5 x 9.21 x 6.14 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e March 03, 2026\u003c\/div\u003e\n            ","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48459480793337,"sku":"9780198950721","price":171.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0789\/2782\/3097\/files\/uumFqRjxgo9780198950721.webp?v=1780170791","url":"https:\/\/bookscloud.io\/products\/modernisms-whims-hardcover","provider":"BooksCloud Book Dropshipping","version":"1.0","type":"link"}