Who's listening to modernism? BBC features and audience response

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

This article focuses on three literary features—A Room of One's Own (1946), centred on the work of Virginia Woolf, an adaptation of David Jones’ epic poem In Parenthesis (1946) and Herbert Read's verse play Moon's Farm (1951)—in order to examine how they reflected on and adapted various aspects of modernist innovation. It also examines the range of listener response offered in the BBC Listener Research Reports for these programmes—from surprise and delight to outright bewilderment, with many listeners pleased in principle with the challenging literary content, but looking for pointed guidance on how to approach it, whilst others who were receptive to avant-garde writing were quick to identify lapses in quality. This article therefore traces how literary modernism functioned, and was experienced, when adapted into an aural experience in the late 1940s and early ’50s, the most innovative period of the Features Department.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)239-251
Number of pages13
JournalMedia History
Volume24
Issue number2
Early online date7 May 2018
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 7 May 2018

Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)

  • BBC radio
  • modernism
  • adaptation
  • audience response
  • features
  • listeners
  • Virginia Woolf
  • Herbert Read
  • David Jones

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