Much of the literary and cultural theory developed throughout the twentieth century relied on modernist texts and artefacts as both example and paradigm. This Dictionary collects, categorises and ...intersects literary, aesthetic, political and cultural terms that in one way or another came into being through the debates, conflicts, co-operations, experiments – individual and collective – that characterised modernism. In concise entries from international experts, it presents the terms, categories, concepts, tropes, movements, forged through the modernist upheavals (at once aesthetic and political), highlighting their genealogy, their modernist ‘newness’, and their historical longevity.
ABSTRACT
The article explores the significance of laughter in Thomas Mann's Der Zauberberg. While laughter is a prominent feature in the novel, it has not received sufficient critical consideration ...either in Mann scholarship or, more generally, in studies of modernism. Through close examination of selected episodes of laughter, this study establishes the importance of laughter in the novel, both quantitatively and qualitatively. The analysis examines the extent to which the representation of laughter in the novel conforms to or deviates from recent characterisations of laughter in modernist texts. While certain interpretations of modernist laughter as disruptive and/or pathological can be applied to this text, this is not entirely true of its use in Der Zauberberg. Rather, the significance of laughter shifts constantly throughout the novel, culminating in a crisis of laughter that is part of a larger crisis of sociability and ‘Bildung’. The novel suggests that laughter formerly played a critical role in fostering communication, sociability, self‐awareness, and civility. In contrast, the crisis of laughter towards the end of the novel invites reflection on the loss of these social and humane functions. The crisis of laughter in Der Zauberberg, I argue, is of particular relevance to the interpretation of laughter in other modernist novels which engage in critical dialogue with the ‘Bildungsroman’ tradition.
Der Aufsatz untersucht die Funktion des Lachens in Thomas Manns Der Zauberberg. Obwohl das Lachen häufig im Roman vorkommt, wurde es sowohl in der Mann‐Forschung als auch in der Modernismusforschung weitgehend übersehen. Durch eine detaillierte Untersuchung ausgewählter Lachepisoden stellt diese Studie die Bedeutung des Lachens im Roman sowohl quantitativ als auch qualitativ heraus und deckt zudem auf, in welchem Maß die Darstellung des Lachens im Roman neuere Charakterisierungen des modernistischen Lachens (als subversiv oder pathologisch) entweder bestätigt oder von ihnen abweicht. Teilweise treffen diese Charakteristiken zwar auch auf den Zauberberg zu, dennoch weicht das Lachen im Roman deutlich von diesen Deutungsmustern ab, indem sich seine Bedeutung im Laufe des Romans immer wieder verschiebt und in einer Krise des Lachens gipfelt, die Teil einer größeren Krise der Geselligkeit und Bildung ist. Der Roman zeigt einerseits, wie das Lachen in der ‘längst verflossenen’ Zeit vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg eine entscheidende Rolle bei der Förderung von Kommunikation, Geselligkeit, Selbsterkenntnis und Höflichkeit spielte. Die gegen Ende des Romans inszenierte Krise des Lachens hingegen fordert den Leser auf, über diese verlorene soziale und humane Funktion nachzudenken. Die aufgezeigte Krise des Lachens im Zauberberg wirft neues Licht auf das Lachen im Erzählwerk des Modernismus, ist aber von besonderer Relevanz für Romane, die sich kritisch mit der Tradition des Bildungsromans auseinandersetzen.
Glamour is an alluring but elusive concept. We most readily associate it with fashion, industrial design, and Hollywood of the Golden Age, and yet it also shaped the language and interests of high ...modernism. In Glamour in Six Dimensions, Judith Brown looks at the historical and aesthetic roots of glamour in the early decades of the twentieth century, arguing that glamour is the defining aesthetic of modernism. In the clean lines of modernism she finds the ideal conditions for glamour-blankness, polish, impenetrability, and the suspicion of emptiness behind it all. Brown focuses on several cultural products that she argues helped to shape glamour's meanings: the most significant perfume of the twentieth century, Chanel No. 5; the idea of the Jazz Age and its ubiquitous cigarette; the celebrity photograph; the staging of primitivism; and the invention of a shimmering plastic called cellophane. Alongside these artifacts, she takes up the development, refinement, and analysis of glamour in Anglo-American poetry, film, fiction, and drama of the period. Glamour in Six Dimensions thus asks its reader to see the proximity between the vernacular and elite cultures of modernism, and particularly how glamour was animated by artists working at the crossroads of the mundane and the extraordinary: Wallace Stevens, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Virginia Woolf, Josephine Baker, D. H. Lawrence, Gertrude Stein, Nella Larsen, and others.
The Oxford Handbook of Modernisms situates literary modernisms and the modernist arts in a series of unfolding relations with mass society and popular culture in both national and transnational ...settings. Containing fifty-six specially commissioned essays, it updates and extends the scope and depth of previous synoptic guides, bringing together new approaches to the more obvious themes of modernist studies as well as new research on the variety of cultural, aesthetic, and geographical factors that were intrinsic to the creation of modernism. The contributors draw upon a variety of interdisciplinary approaches and new methodologies in order to take account of the development of revisionist modernist studies over the past three decades. Two innovative features of the Handbook are its focus upon the cross-media and international character of modernism. A number of the essays examine visual culture and other media in order to delineate the aesthetic, intellectual, and cultural formations linking the innovations and experiments of literary modernism with work in other arts and media. Others seek to analyse how Anglo-American and European models were inflected in a different temporal frame and in quite distinct geographical contexts. The Handbook is divided into six sections in order to reflect changed critical perspectives upon modernism's formal innovation and experiment, to foreground the relation of literature and the other arts, and to understand these in appropriate intellectual, social, and geocultural settings. The received canon is therefore revisited and ‘made new’ as the varying aspects of metropolitan, regional, national, and transnational modernisms come into view.
Having as its theme the existing relation among Declan Kiberd's notion of "self-invention", Irish novelist James Joyce's work, and the Modernist context, the article's main objective is to critically ...analyse the essay Portrait of the Artist, written by Joyce in 1904. In order to do so, the article discusses the concept of 'self-invention', the main features of Portrait of the Artist, as well as the imbrication between the experimental precepts and practices that mark Modernism and the Irish colonial context. The ideas of Terry Eagleton, Richard Ellmann, James Fairhall, Declan Kiberd, along with Joyce's were articulated as the theoretical assumptions of the article. One of the results of the investigation carried out throughout the article is to make explicit how the Irish colonial context in which the writing of Portrait of the Artist took place made a fundamental contribution to the experimental quality of the ' selfinvention' project that would end up constituting a significant portion of Joyce's body of work. Keywords: James Joyce; Portrait of the Artist; Self-invention; Modernism. Tendo como tema a relacao existente entre a nocao de "auto-invencao" desenvolvida por Declan Kiberd, a obra do romancista irlandes James Joyce e o contexto modernista, o artigo tem como objetivo principal analisar criticamente o ensaio Retrato do artista, escrito por Joyce em 1904. Para tanto, o artigo discute o conceito de 'auto-invencao', as linhas mestras que compoem Retrato do artista, assim como a imbricacao entre os preceitos e praticas experimentais que marcam o modernismo e o contexto colonial irlandes, tendo como pressupostos teoricos ideias de autores como Terry Eagleton, Richard Ellmann, James Fairhall, Declan Kiberd alem do proprio Joyce. Um dos resultados obtidos com a investigacao desenvolvida ao longo do artigo e evidenciar como o contexto colonial irlandes em que se deu a escrita de Retrato do artista contribuiu fundamentalmente para o carater experimental do projeto de auto-invencao que viria a integrar parte consideravel da obra de Joyce como um todo. Palavras-chave: James Joyce; Retrato do artista; Auto-invencao; Modernismo.
Having as its theme the existing relation among Declan Kiberd's notion of "self-invention", Irish novelist James Joyce's work, and the Modernist context, the article's main objective is to critically ...analyse the essay Portrait of the Artist, written by Joyce in 1904. In order to do so, the article discusses the concept of 'self-invention', the main features of Portrait of the Artist, as well as the imbrication between the experimental precepts and practices that mark Modernism and the Irish colonial context. The ideas of Terry Eagleton, Richard Ellmann, James Fairhall, Declan Kiberd, along with Joyce's were articulated as the theoretical assumptions of the article. One of the results of the investigation carried out throughout the article is to make explicit how the Irish colonial context in which the writing of Portrait of the Artist took place made a fundamental contribution to the experimental quality of the ' selfinvention' project that would end up constituting a significant portion of Joyce's body of work.