Paradoxy of modernism / Robert Scholes.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Scholes, Robert, 1929-2016.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Modernism (Art).

Modernism (Literature).

Arts, Modern--20th century.

Arts, Modern.

Criticism--History--20th century.

Criticism.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (1 online resource (xiv, 295 pages) : illustrations

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New Haven [Conn.] : Yale University Press, c2006.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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-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.

Contents:

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.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. [281]-284) and index.

ISBN:

9786611729189

9781281729187

1281729183

9780300128840

0300128843

OCLC:

1024042800