Commodity Modernism: Tobacco and Sugar in Twentieth-Century Global Literatures

Mullett, Matthew (2024) Commodity Modernism: Tobacco and Sugar in Twentieth-Century Global Literatures. Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia.

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Abstract

Commodities have helped to form modernity. Additionally, the items we produce and consume point to cultural, national, and individual identities. This wide-ranging thesis seeks to use commodities tobacco and sugar to shed light on the intersection between production, consumption, and modernist literature. By placing areas of production into conversation with areas of consumption through comparative literary analysis and historical context, I make the case for a broader conception of modernist literature that celebrates the literature of commodity production alongside the cities of modernity. I organise this study into two parts: the first placing representations of tobacco into contention, mirrored by the second on sugar. With an approach that combines local, national, regional scales I use tobacco and sugar to compare and contrast otherwise disparate early twentieth-century texts from around the Atlantic. The texts in question contrast the commodity-producing regions of modernity—the Caribbean, South America, the U.S. South—with the sites of metropolitan consumption of London, Trieste, and Dublin. Transnational modernism must walk a highly nuanced line between engaging with national boundaries whilst transcending them through comparative methodologies. By exploring the concept of Commodity Modernism I make the case for a hybrid, multi-valent, multi-polar and stratified model that supports an avowedly interdisciplinary approach.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing
Depositing User:	Kitty Laine
Date Deposited:	11 Jun 2025 14:36
Last Modified:	11 Jun 2025 14:36
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/99469
DOI:

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