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 vii
... Others 120 PART II Paradoxes FIVE Durable Fluff : The Importance of Not Being Earnest 143 SIX Iridescent Mediocrity : Dornford Yates and Others 162 SEVEN Formulaic Creativity : Simenon's Maigret Novels 195 PART III Contents.
... Others 120 PART II Paradoxes FIVE Durable Fluff : The Importance of Not Being Earnest 143 SIX Iridescent Mediocrity : Dornford Yates and Others 162 SEVEN Formulaic Creativity : Simenon's Maigret Novels 195 PART III Contents.
Page 11
... Five Faces of Modernity : To understand the nature of kitsch we should , then , ana- lyze the particular hedonism characteristic of middle- class mentality . Its primary feature is perhaps that it is a middle - of - the - road hedonism ...
... Five Faces of Modernity : To understand the nature of kitsch we should , then , ana- lyze the particular hedonism characteristic of middle- class mentality . Its primary feature is perhaps that it is a middle - of - the - road hedonism ...
Page 35
... five years before the out- break of war in 1914 , the visual arts played a central role in dis- cussions of Modernism , leading the way , to some extent , for the other arts . Writers were already borrowing terms like Impres- sionism ...
... five years before the out- break of war in 1914 , the visual arts played a central role in dis- cussions of Modernism , leading the way , to some extent , for the other arts . Writers were already borrowing terms like Impres- sionism ...
Page 40
... five hundred sects , as in Protestantism ; but there were certainly a hundred . For who doubts that the Impres- sionists , the Neo - Impressionists , the Post - Impressionists , the Futurists , the Cubists , the Synthesists , the ...
... five hundred sects , as in Protestantism ; but there were certainly a hundred . For who doubts that the Impres- sionists , the Neo - Impressionists , the Post - Impressionists , the Futurists , the Cubists , the Synthesists , the ...
Page 88
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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