Skip to main content
Go to the home page of the European Commission (opens in new window)
English en
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS

Modernism and Illness Experience: Embodied Strategies of Textual Production

Project description

Illness and creativity in modernist writing

Interest in how ill health influences modernist literature is growing, but the link between illness and authors’ writing practices remains underexplored. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the ModIX project will investigate how experiences of illness shaped the writing of James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, and Katherine Mansfield, authors who faced significant health challenges. By applying affect theory to genetic criticism, the project will analyse how the authors’ bodies influenced their work. It aims to establish affective genetic criticism as a method to deepen understanding of illness in modernist literature and the supportive networks around these writers.

Objective

The role that ill health plays in thematic concerns of modernist literature has been a topic of scholarly interest in recent years. Less considered, however, is the relationship between ill health and modernist practices of writing. The primary research aims of ModIX are to provide a sound methodology for exploring this relationship and to define modernist writing strategies and accommodations as they relate to authors’ illness experiences. Methodologically innovative, ModIX applies affect theory to genetic criticism in order to trace the author’s body as a tool and facilitator of writing. The project focuses on three key modernist authors who experienced illness to a life-altering degree: James Joyce (1882-1941), D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930) and Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923). Drawing together insights from affect theory, health humanities and archival studies, ModIX will reconstruct the literary geneses of Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover and selected short stories by Katherine Mansfield, all written during periods of the authors’ ill health and needs for care. ModIX’s research objectives are to consolidate affective genetic criticism as a methodology, to understand modernist illness experience phenomenologically, and to reconstruct the networks of care that surrounded these modernists as a result of ill health and creative needs. ModIX goes beyond the state of the art to understand the lived experience of illness not only as a biographical fact, but as a dynamic, material factor in shaping, facilitating and sometimes frustrating modernist literary labour and production. ModIX is an archival project that will produce original and impactful results. The project outputs will include three peer-reviewed articles in high quality journals, a monograph proposal, and a research summit to form the basis for a large-scale interdisciplinary ERC project on illness experience and literary production.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

This project has not yet been classified with EuroSciVoc.
Be the first one to suggest relevant scientific fields and help us improve our classification service

Keywords

Programme(s)

Topic(s)

Funding Scheme

HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships

See all projects funded under this funding scheme

Call for proposal

(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01

See all projects funded under this call

Coordinator

LOUGHBOROUGH UNIVERSITY
Net EU contribution
€ 260 347,92
Address
ASHBY ROAD
LE11 3TU Loughborough
United Kingdom
Region
East Midlands (England) Leicestershire, Rutland and Northamptonshire Leicestershire CC and Rutland
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Total cost
No data