Paradoxy of modernism
In 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{u2014}high/low, old/new, hard/soft, poetry/rhetoric{u2014}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 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{u2019}s delight the rich cultural terrain of modernism
Print Book, English, ©2006
Yale University Press, New Haven [Conn.], ©2006
History
xiv, 295 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm
9780300108200, 0300108206
60543415
High and low in Modernist criticism
Old and new in Modernist art
Poetry and rhetoric in the Modernist montage
Hard and soft : Joyce and others
Durable fluff : the importance of not being earnest
Iridescent mediocrity : Dornford Yates and others
Formulaic creativity : Simenon's Maigret novels
Model artists in Paris : Hastings, Hammett, and Kiki
The aesthete in the brothel : Proust and others