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
Results 1-5 of 17
Page x
... define literary Modernism in terms of verbal ex- perimentation or some form of departure from grammar , rep- resentation , or narrative structure . Thinking about all this , studying the verbal and visual texts from the modern period ...
... define literary Modernism in terms of verbal ex- perimentation or some form of departure from grammar , rep- resentation , or narrative structure . Thinking about all this , studying the verbal and visual texts from the modern period ...
Page xii
... began her own career as a novelist . After the investigation of Old and New in art , we shall conclude Part I with two more considerations of the workings of paradoxy in the definition of Modernism in literature : xii Preface.
... began her own career as a novelist . After the investigation of Old and New in art , we shall conclude Part I with two more considerations of the workings of paradoxy in the definition of Modernism in literature : xii Preface.
Page xiii
Robert Scholes. of paradoxy in the definition of Modernism in literature : the distinction between Poetry and Rhetoric in Chapter 3 , and that between Hardness and Softness or sentimentalism in Chapter 4. In Part II the focus will shift ...
Robert Scholes. of paradoxy in the definition of Modernism in literature : the distinction between Poetry and Rhetoric in Chapter 3 , and that between Hardness and Softness or sentimentalism in Chapter 4. In Part II the focus will shift ...
Page 4
... definition of the Great Divide as a static binary of high Modernism vs. the market . My argument was rather that there had been , since the mid - nineteenth cen- tury in Europe , a powerful imaginary insisting on the di- vide while time ...
... definition of the Great Divide as a static binary of high Modernism vs. the market . My argument was rather that there had been , since the mid - nineteenth cen- tury in Europe , a powerful imaginary insisting on the di- vide while time ...
Page 6
... important issue we shall face. If we were to follow Lukács, we might define the opposition in terms of entertainment versus representation (allowing the word “rep- resentation " to stand for the complex issues Lukács addressed 6 Paradoxies.
... important issue we shall face. If we were to follow Lukács, we might define the opposition in terms of entertainment versus representation (allowing the word “rep- resentation " to stand for the complex issues Lukács addressed 6 Paradoxies.
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