The recent enthusiasm for things postmodern has often produced a caricature of modernism as monolithic and reactionary. In a lively and wide-ranging discussion, Peter Nicholls argues that the distinctive feature of Modernism is its diversity. Providing original analytic accounts of each of the main movements, he explores the ways in which the new stylistic developments were closely bound up with a shifting politics of gender and authority. ‘Modernisms’ introduces the reader to a wealth of literary experiment, beginning in the nineteenth century world of Baudelaire and Mallarme and moving forward into the recognisably modern one of the first avant-gardes. Close readings of key texts monitor the explosive histories of Futurism, Expressionism, Cubism, Dada and Surrealist - histories which allow the familiar terrain of Anglo-American Modernism to be seen in a strikingly different light. ‘Modernisms’ invites us to rethink our habits of reading seminal works of twentieth-century British and American literature, transforming one thing into many, and evoking the richness and diversity of a cultural moment which continues to shape our own.
Table of contents:
Preface - Akcnowledgements - Abbreviations - Introduction: Of a Certain Tone - Ironies of the Modern - Breaking the Rules: Symbolism in France - Decadence and the Art of Death - Paths to the Future - A Metaphysics of Modernity: Marinetti and Italian Futurism - Other Spaces: French Cubism and Russian Futurism - Cruel Structures: The Development of Expressionism - Modernity and the `Men of `1914' - At a Tangent: Other Modernisms - From Fantasy to Structure: Dada and Neo-Classicism - Other Times: The Narratives of High Modernism - Death and Desire: The Surrealism Adventure - Coda - Notes - Bibliography - Index
Table of contents:
Preface - Akcnowledgements - Abbreviations - Introduction: Of a Certain Tone - Ironies of the Modern - Breaking the Rules: Symbolism in France - Decadence and the Art of Death - Paths to the Future - A Metaphysics of Modernity: Marinetti and Italian Futurism - Other Spaces: French Cubism and Russian Futurism - Cruel Structures: The Development of Expressionism - Modernity and the `Men of `1914' - At a Tangent: Other Modernisms - From Fantasy to Structure: Dada and Neo-Classicism - Other Times: The Narratives of High Modernism - Death and Desire: The Surrealism Adventure - Coda - Notes - Bibliography - Index