Paradoxy of ModernismIn this lively, personal book, Robert Scholes intervenes in ongoing discussions about modernism in the arts during the crucial half-century from 1895 to 1945. While critics of and apologists for modernism have defined modern art and literature in terms of binary oppositions—high/low, old/new, hard/soft, poetry/rhetoric—Scholes contends that these distinctions are in fact confused and misleading. Such oppositions are instances of “paradoxy”—an apparent clarity that covers real confusion. Closely examining specific literary texts, drawings, critical writings, and memoirs, Scholes seeks to complicate the neat polar oppositions attributed to modernism. He argues for the rehabilitation of works in the middle ground that have been trivialized in previous evaluations, and he fights orthodoxy with such paradoxes as “durable fluff,” “formulaic creativity,” and “iridescent mediocrity.” The book reconsiders major figures like James Joyce while underscoring the value of minor figures and addressing new attention to others rarely studied. It includes twenty-two illustrations of the artworks discussed. Filled with the observations of a personable and witty guide, this is a book that opens up for a reader’s delight the rich cultural terrain of modernism. |
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Page 1
... marginalized if not excluded by the manifestos and critical dogmas of Modernism, though we shall return to High texts in Low places in the final chapter. 1 High and Low in Modernist Criticism I want to PART I Paradoxies.
... marginalized if not excluded by the manifestos and critical dogmas of Modernism, though we shall return to High texts in Low places in the final chapter. 1 High and Low in Modernist Criticism I want to PART I Paradoxies.
Page 27
... final lecture . In the introduction he ar- gued that “ the God of nature " has constructed the world so that humans may pass from “ corporeal pleasures to the more refined pleasures of sense ; and not less so , from these to the ex ...
... final lecture . In the introduction he ar- gued that “ the God of nature " has constructed the world so that humans may pass from “ corporeal pleasures to the more refined pleasures of sense ; and not less so , from these to the ex ...
Page 50
... final page of the issue . In the course of his article , Hulme had said some things about this drawing but noted that it was one that the public and the critics had in general understood . He felt it important , therefore , to explain ...
... final page of the issue . In the course of his article , Hulme had said some things about this drawing but noted that it was one that the public and the critics had in general understood . He felt it important , therefore , to explain ...
Page 58
... final stage of this long argument over the New and the Old , and the question of what Modernism in the arts really may be . Walter Sickert joined in this debate with a letter in the next issue , in which he took issue with Hulme on the ...
... final stage of this long argument over the New and the Old , and the question of what Modernism in the arts really may be . Walter Sickert joined in this debate with a letter in the next issue , in which he took issue with Hulme on the ...
Page 65
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Contents
1 | |
3 | |
33 | |
Poetry and Rhetoric in the Modernist Montage | 95 |
Hard and Soft Joyce and Others | 120 |
PART II Paradoxes | 141 |
Durable Fluff The Importance of Not Being Earnest | 143 |
Iridescent Mediocrity Dornford Yates and Others | 162 |
Formulaic CreativitySimenons Maigret Novels | 195 |
PART III Doxies | 219 |
Model Artists in ParisHastings Hamnett and Kiki | 221 |
The Aesthete in the Brothel Proust and Others | 257 |
Works Cited | 281 |
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Common terms and phrases
abstract aesthetic Anthony Ludovici argue artists Beatrice Hastings beauty Berry brothel called chapter characters Clement Greenberg comedy course Cubist culture discussion Dornford Yates doxy drawing durable fluff Eisenstein Eliot emotion English Epstein ernism essay Ezra Pound fiction formula French Georges Simenon Greenberg Gwendolen Hastings Henri Gaudier-Brzeska High and Low Hulme Hulme's images irony issue Joyce Joyce's Kiki Kiki's kind kitsch Lady Bracknell literary literature London look Ludovici Lukács magazine Marcel mediocrity middlebrow Modernist Modernist critical modes Modigliani montage narrative narrator Neo-Realists never Nina Hamnett painter painting paradoxy of Modernism Paris passage perhaps Picasso play pleasure poem poet poetry Post-Impressionist Pound Proust readers realistic rhetoric scene seems sentiment serious Simenon social story T. E. Hulme T. S. Eliot texts things thought tion translation ture turn Ulysses visual art Walter Sickert Woolf word writers Wyndham Lewis