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. |
From inside the book
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Page xi
... culture of our own time. So I began to reconsider Modernism, casting a wider net for useful texts— and to recognize that this was not my time but a very different time, when other views and values prevailed, which could be understood ...
... culture of our own time. So I began to reconsider Modernism, casting a wider net for useful texts— and to recognize that this was not my time but a very different time, when other views and values prevailed, which could be understood ...
Page xii
... culture — and we will look at images of the works they were dis- cussing . The critical vocabulary of Modernism began with the visual arts , and was to some extent — and not always happily— adopted by literary artists and critics ...
... culture — and we will look at images of the works they were dis- cussing . The critical vocabulary of Modernism began with the visual arts , and was to some extent — and not always happily— adopted by literary artists and critics ...
Page 4
... cultural products are subject to the market was already advanced by Theodor Adorno , key theorist of the divide , in the late 1930s . ( 366–67 ) Huyssen goes on to say that he was mainly interested in how the divide played out in the ...
... cultural products are subject to the market was already advanced by Theodor Adorno , key theorist of the divide , in the late 1930s . ( 366–67 ) Huyssen goes on to say that he was mainly interested in how the divide played out in the ...
Page 5
... cultural work , which meant , for him , a Hegelian project , in which characters would embody the workings of a progressive historical dialec- tic. This led him, as similar concerns led Erich Auerbach, High and Low 5.
... cultural work , which meant , for him , a Hegelian project , in which characters would embody the workings of a progressive historical dialec- tic. This led him, as similar concerns led Erich Auerbach, High and Low 5.
Page 7
... culture — depends , he argued , on a class with leisure and education : " No culture can develop without a so- cial basis , without a source of stable income . And in the case of the avant - garde , this was provided by an elite among ...
... culture — depends , he argued , on a class with leisure and education : " No culture can develop without a so- cial basis , without a source of stable income . And in the case of the avant - garde , this was provided by an elite among ...
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