Modernism and the ordinary

Introduction. The paradox of the ordinary

Everyday life theory

The nineteenth century and the everyday

Ordinary life and modern war

James Joyce and the realism of the ordinary. Ibsen and epiphany

The lists of Ulysses

Virginia Woolf and the "cotton wool of daily life".

Poetry versus prose

Mrs. Dalloway

Facts and things

Gertrude Stein, William James, and habit in the shadow of war. Habit : "the enormous fly-wheel of society"

"Suspended in time"

A "perfectly ordinary couple living an ordinary life"

Wallace Stevens's commonplace. The normal poet

"An ordinary evening in New Haven"

Conclusion. Beginnings and endings : Proust's temporality and the everyday.