Introduces the full range and depth of the early 20th-century European avant- gardes This engaging introduction outlines the cultural and political contexts in which the avant-gardes operated, taking ...readers on a journey throughout the whole of Europe. It discusses the most salient features of the avant-gardes' work in all the arts, succinctly surveys the major avant-garde movements (cubism, futurism, expressionism, Dadaism, constructivism and many other –isms) and demonstrates the ways in which they transformed the face of all modern art forms. Clearly written, this book shows readers and students of modernism how and why the avant-gardes were a major force in modern art and culture. Key Features * An up-to-date and thorough guide to the 'classic' European avant-gardes, from 1905 to 1935 * Covers all the arts practiced by the classic European avant-gardes – from painting and film, literature and sculpture, architecture and photography to theatre, dance and music – focusing on the specificity of each art form as well as on what united them * Includes text-boxes, 100 illustrations, many in colour, and a user-friendly index/glossary
Literature Now Sascha Bru, Ben De Bruyn, Michel Delville
2016, 2016-01-19, 2016-01-31
eBook
Introduces the most important terms for understanding literature, past and present. Literature Now argues that modern literary history is currently the main site of theoretical and methodological ...reflection in literary studies. Via 19 key terms, the book takes stock of recent scholarship and demonstrates how analyses of particular historical phenomena have modified our understanding of crucial notions like archive, book, event, media, objects, style and the senses. The book not only reveals a rich diversity of subjects and approaches but also identifies the most salient traits of literature and literary studies today. Leading literary critics and historians offer thought-provoking arguments as well as authoritative explorations of the key terms of literary studies providing students as well as scholars with a rich resource for exploring theoretical issues from a historically informed perspective. Key Features * Organised around the key terms used in literary studies today: archive, book, medium, translation, subjects, senses, animals, objects, politics, time, invention, event, generation, period, beauty, mimesis, style, popular and genre * Puts literary history at the forefront of theoretical and methodological reflection in literary studies * Original chapters by leading literary critics, theorists and historians
Wittgenstein Reading Sascha Bru, Wolfgang Huemer, Daniel Steuer / Sascha Bru, Wolfgang Huemer, Daniel Steuer
2013, 2013-10-29, Volume:
2
eBook
Wittgenstein's thought is reflected in his reading and reception of other authors. Wittgenstein Reading approaches the moment of literature as a vehicle of self-reflection for Wittgenstein. What ...sounds, on the surface, like criticism (e.g. of Shakespeare) can equally be understood as a simple registration of Wittgenstein's own reaction, hence a piece of self-diagnosis or self-analysis. The book brings a representative sample of authors, from Shakespeare, Goethe, or Dostoyevsky to some that have received far less attention in Wittgenstein scholarship like Kleist, Lessing, or Wilhelm Busch and Johann Nepomuk Nestroy. Furthermore, the volume offersmeans for the cultural contextualization of Wittgenstein's thoughts. Unique to this book is its internal design. The editors' introduction sets the scene with regards to both biography and theory, while each of the subsequent chapters takes a quotation from Wittgenstein on a particular author as its point of departure for developing a more specific theme relating to the writer in question. This format serves to avoid the well-trodden paths of discussions on the relationship between philosophy and literature, allowing for unconventional observations to be made. Furthermore, the volume offersmeans for the cultural contextualization of Wittgenstein's thoughts.
...that we have nothing but his works, will we not recognize in them a river of fire? —Jacques Lacan1 In “Der Dichter und das Phantasieren” (Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming, 1907), one of the few ...talks Sigmund Freud ever gave to a literary audience, the psychoanalyst explored the nature of literary imagination and aesthetic pleasure.2 It took Freud only about twenty minutes to get his message across to the ninety or so listeners present, in terms the local press the day after reported to have been “subtle and at times clairvoyant”: the poet resembling a selfish fantasist and creative writing analogous to the act of daydreaming, literature’s power lies above all in its ability to allow adult readers an orderly, yet shameless and pleasurable, experience of otherwise repressed wishes and memories of childhood play.3 Freud had begun developing this thesis earlier and would remain interested in it well after his 1907 talk, for his assessment of the function of literature formed part of his more general conviction that modern culture is the product of a renunciation of deep-seated psychological drives.4 This assertion and the heuristic tools psychoanalysis offered to unearth such drives attracted a wide variety of modernist authors and artists to Freud. Along with Adolf Josef Storfer, to whom we will return, Heller is largely forgotten in the histories of both modernism and psychoanalysis.9 In the first decades of the twentieth century, however, Heller was known throughout the German-speaking art and literary world. Running a shop which had opened in 1905 on the Bauernmarkt in Vienna and which distributed books and periodicals on art, literature, and culture intended for children, women, and men, Heller catered mostly to bibliophiles and graphic art buffs through his journal Neue Blätter für Literatur und Kunst (later named Wiener Kunst-und Buchschau), which set out to fight against “kitsch in art and literature, against clichés and mass production.” 11 To distinguish his establishment from the roughly 2,000 bookshops in Austria around the turn of the century, Heller set up many initiatives.12 In the summer of 1906, Heller reached out to the Viennese intellectual and literary crowd with a survey asking to recommend ten good books, the responses to which were published in 1907 in a volume introduced by Hugo von Hofmannsthal.13 The thirty-two respondents included Hermann Bahr, spokesman of the avant-garde Young Vienna group, Schnitzler, Rilke, Stefan Zweig, Hermann Hesse, and physicist Ernst Mach, among others.
The central theme of this issue is the singularity of general and comparative literary theory in the Low Countries. How do they combine insights from neighboring linguistic areas, more specifically ...the dominant French, English and German traditions? In what branches were and are Flemish and Dutch literary theorists specifically strong or innovative? Which theorists and critics were influential? The questions addressed here are meant to instigate a debate on the future of general and comparative literary theory in the Low countries. The issue consists of two parts: ‘The Text and its Limits’ focuses on intra-textual models and criticism, ‘Limits in Context’ looks at the impact and shape of trends and schools of literary studies in the Low Countries.
We lack an understanding of whether and how artists and writers from the left in Germany projected an alternative image of the "red woman" so central to the (proto)fascist imaginary. This article is ...a modest attempt to fill this gap. We limit our scope here to the exploits of German avant-garde artists and writers, focussing mainly on exponents of expressionism and Dadaism in literature, theater, the visual arts, and architecture.
The Aesthetics of Matter Sarah Posman, Anne Reverseau, David Ayers, Sascha Bru, Benedikt Hjartarson / Sarah Posman, Anne Reverseau, David Ayers, Sascha Bru, Benedikt Hjartarson
2013
eBook
It has often been argued that the arrival of the early-20th-century avant- gardes and modernisms coincided with an in-depth exploration of the materiality of art and writing. The European historical ...avant-gardes and modernisms excelled in their attempts to establish the specificity of media and art forms as well as in experimenting with the hybridity of the materials of their multiple disciplines. This third volume of the series European Avant- Garde and Modernism Studies sheds light on the full range and import of this aspect in avant-garde and modernist aesthetics across all art forms and throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. The book's contributions, written by experts from some 20 countries, seek to answer the following questions: * What sort of objects and material, works and media help us to properly grasp the avant-garde and modernist "aesthetics of matter"? * How were affects, emotions and sensory and bodily experiences transferred and transformed in the experiment with matter? * How were "immaterial" things such as concepts of time changed in this aesthetic moment? * What "material meanings" were disseminated in the cultural transfer and translation of objects? * How did subsequent avant-gardes deal with the "aesthetics of matter" in their response to historical predecessors?
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