This module aims to examine some of the key writers from a turbulent period of artistic experiment and innovation. It begins with the decadence of the 1890s and then moves on to look in close textual detail at many of the boldest new kinds of poetry and fiction that emerge in the early twentieth century as the new language of modernism. It will also seek to understand the wider social and cultural contexts, including imperialism, nationalist struggles, socialist revolution, feminism and mass-culture, in which these works powerfully intervene.