Proletarian Modernism: Film, Literature, Theory

PMLA ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 134 (5) ◽  
pp. 1056-1075
Author(s):  
Benjamin Kohlmann
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Aesthetic Theory ◽  
Alternative Route ◽  
Modernist Literature ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Literature Theory ◽  
Opening Up

This article identifies a body of work—films, literary texts, and theories of the aesthetic—that can help us reopen the question of what it means for an artwork to project a vision of classlessness. The article begins by focusing on early-twentieth-century proletarian modernism, in particular in the cinematic work of Sergey Eisenstein and in British literary works that repurposed Woolfian and Joycean styles during the later interwar years. Proletarian modernism, I argue, highlights an alternative route taken by modernist literature and art: unlike the late modernists feted in much recent scholarship, proletarian modernists aimed to retool modernism, opening up new and global political futures for it rather than anticipating its end. The article concludes by showing that the cultural genealogy of proletarian modernism mapped out here doubles as a prehistory of contemporary aesthetic theory: it enables us to recognize the significant political and theoretical erasures that structure recent accounts of art's democratic potential.

scholarly journals POLISH AESTHETIC DISCOURSE OF THE 20TH CENTURY: INTERPRETATION OF INTERPRETATIONS

2018 ◽  
pp. 25-29
Author(s):  
E. I. Onishchenko
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Aesthetic Theory ◽  
Specific Nature ◽  
Theoretical Orientations ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
National University ◽  
Aesthetic Consciousness ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Aesthetic

The article is devoted to the analysis of the Polish aesthetic discourse of the twentieth century and the prospects for its interpretation in the Ukrainian aesthetics, particularly in the works by Kateryna Shevchuk, defended at the department of ethics, aesthetics and culture studies of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. These research greatly extend the idea of the aesthetic canon of the Polish thought, classically represented by the aesthetics R. Ingarden and W. Tatarkiewicz and reveal the names of virtually unknown in Ukraine Polish scientists, including special interest is the legacy of L. Blaustein, M. Wallis, H. Elzenberg and G. Ossowski. In particular, this perspective covers traditional for the twentieth century aesthetics problems, including psychology of art, collective aesthetic experience, ratio, fantasy, and imagination. Also, new interpretive perspectives of sublime and ugly, aesthetical experience are opened. The theoretical orientations of the Polish scholars, in one way or another, were connected with the cornerstones of the aesthetic science - its subject, the conceptual-categorical apparatus, the structure of aesthetic consciousness, the phenomenon of artistic creativity, the specific nature of art, and others. In the process of conceptual concretization, in the field of Polish aesthetics a number of problems have been rather clearly distinguished, among which the special attention of practically all of its leading representatives has attracted the phenomenon of aesthetical experience. K. Shevchuk’s investigation opens up an opportunity, at least in the format of a secondary interpretation, to join the research of the Polish scholars, whose work proved to be a giant "white spot" for the Ukrainian aestheticians. Introducing actually unexplored concepts Polish scientists to the modern Ukrainian aesthetic theory not only facilitates the opening of "unknown pages" in the history of the twentieth century aesthetics, but also makes actual mark of new approaches to the analysis of classical problems, the relevance of which will never be a subject of doubt.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Angela Frattarola
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Modernist Literature ◽  
Sound Perception ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Many ◽  
Geographical Scope ◽  
Century Literature

The introduction begins with a close reading of Rudyard Kipling’s “Wireless” in order to clarify the influence of auditory technology on turn-of-the-century literature. While explaining the geographical scope and limitations of the project, the Introduction situates the modernist shift toward sound perception as one of the many breaks with tradition that characterized the period. It also surveys recent scholarship that begins to consider how the soundscape, auditory technologies, and music of the early twentieth century influenced modernist literature.

Conclusion

Moonlighting ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 195-224
Author(s):  
Nathan Waddell
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Modernist Literature ◽  
Main Thrust ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Opening Up

This chapter provides an overview of the main thrust of this book: how Beethovenian legend—there being no better example than the influential account of Beethoven as the archetypally suffering, Romantic composer, one whose ‘true’ origins in Beethoven’s day-to-day life seem always already hidden by the tales which have accumulated around him and his work—is a kind of encryption. This chapter accounts for the significance of that legendariness as it made its way through modernist literature in the early twentieth century, while also opening up the discussion, in conclusion, to look at the link between Beethovenian cultures and politics, and musico-literary analysis. It suggests that the importance of the book is that its argument gives us a means with which to demonstrate the existence of a hitherto-unacknowledged Beethovenian trajectory within modernist writing, and in so doing to describe its musico-literary operations in a markedly new way.

scholarly journals KAJIAN TEORI FORMALISME DAN STRUKTURALISME

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 79
Author(s):  
Fadlil Munawwar Manshur
Keyword(s):  
Literary Work ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Verbal Art ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Literary Research ◽  
Sound Levels ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
The Aesthetic

From the perspective of formalism theory, this study aims to reveal that a research on literary texts does not only pay attention to textual facts existing in literary works, but also needs to pay attention to what exists outside the text. In the literary works, the element of defamiliarization holds that literary language is able to express facts of stories using unfamiliar languages. From the perspective of structuralism theory, this study aims to reveal that structuralism is conceptually a continuation of formalism which largely depends on language. Structuralism theory has a close relationship with linguistics, especially in analyzing the functions of the language used. The analysis of language function can help understanding language semiotics that views literature as a sign that then led to literary semiotics. Therefore, functioning to examine a phenomenon, the concept of semiotic structuralism emerged as a social fact.  Critical approach was deemed suitable to be used in this study because formalism theory and structuralism theory are part of a social construction and part of a discursive formation in the formation of subject and reality. As a result, it could be seen the position of formalism theory and structuralism theory in literary research of which raw material is language. The findings in this study are that the formalism theory in its development is dynamic and its language construction stimulates readers to respond. In principle, literary work is not autonomous because it contains author’s feelings and society’s mind. Literary research should exceed the boundaries of formalism and be able to create new vocabularies in writing novels. In the novel, there is intertextual polyvalence, which is a series and intensive dialogic linkages that are capable of giving birth to new novels. Another finding is that structuralism theory has a close relationship with linguistics, for example phonological elements in linguistics which can help literary theory in analyzing sound levels in oral literary works. This theory has also developed a study of poetry to the aesthetic level so that this study has shifted from its original aspects of verbal art only to all art and artistic aesthetics in the present time. This shift distinguishes the views between formalism and structuralism in relation to norms and values inherent in language.

scholarly journals ARTISTIC TRANSCRIPTION OF THE EDGAR ALLAN POE'S IMAGERY IN ANTUN GUSTAV MATOŠ'S AND MYKHAILO YATSKIV'S PROSE

2019 ◽  
pp. 181-189
Author(s):  
Anna KOMARYTSIA ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Edgar Allan Poe ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
American Writer ◽  
The World ◽  
Creative Style ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The One ◽  
Definition Of

Background: On the one hand, the literary works of A.G. Matoš were studied by Croatian scholars in the context of the philosophy and poetics of modernism. The authors of fundamental studies about A.G. Matoš are Dubravko Jelčić, Dubravka Oraić Tolić, Mladen Dorkin, Zlatko Posavac, Miljenko Majetić and Nada Iveljić. On the other hand, Ukrainian researchers Mykola Ilnytskyi, Solomiya Pavlychko, Oksana Melnyk, and Polish researcher Agnieszka Matusiak analyzed and studied M. Yatskiv's creative style in the context of the aesthetic canons of the modernism. The novelty of this article is in addressing the influence of E. Poe on the literary texts of the Ukrainian and Croatian modernists using the comparative approach. Purpose: This is the first attempt to analyze the influence of E. Poe on A. G. Matoš and M. Yatskiv. This article treats the actual and yet not studied question of a multilayer impact (composition, imagery set) of the American writer on the Croatian and Ukrainian modernist writers. Results: Romanticism writer Edgar Poe undoubtedly influenced Mykhailo Yatskiv and Antun Gustav Matoš, especially with his essay “The Philosophy of Composition”. In this essay the author demonstrates the principle of constructing the plot with the logic and the hidden mechanisms of imagery construction. But in the biography of the American writer we can find facts that poems such as “Nevermore”, “Ligeia” and others weren`t the result of logic, but they were yearning for his wife who passed away being very young. The author of this study found a numerous allusions on the essay “The Philosophy of Composition” by E. Poe, his images of a horror crow and a cat, as well as the images of dead beloved beautyis in many literary works of A.G. Matoš and M. Yatskiv. Croatian and Ukrainian symbolists also used E. Poe`s technique of the total effect. Mystery element is generalized in the literary texts of three authors in the images of the sphinx, which has several meanings. The most common meaning is the abstract definition of something mysterious that needs to be answered. Similarities between Matoš's and Yatskiv's imagery with American writer E. Poe prove, that Ukrainian and Croatian writers were inspired by the world art achievements, creatively transforming ideas that were contemporary both to the romanticism and modernism. Key words: Edgar Allan Poe, Antun Gustav Matoš, Mykhailo Yatskiv, modernism, romanticism, “The Philosophy of Composition”, art scenography.

Backgazing: Reverse Time in Modernist Culture

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Giles
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Southern Hemisphere ◽  
Modernist Literature ◽  
Reverse Time ◽  
Material Forces ◽  
Middle Years ◽  
Canonical Narratives ◽  
Opening Up

The focus of this book is on how time is represented in reverse forms throughout modernist literature and culture, from about 1900 until the middle years of the twentieth century. It is particularly concerned with how antipodean reorientations of chronological scale reconfigure ways in which the conventional temporal categories of modernism are understood. It treats time neither as a philosophical nor as a theological concern but, rather, as a phenomenon shaped by material forces across different spatial and temporal trajectories. By foregrounding the antipodean slant of this project, it not only integrates the literature of Australia and other parts of the Southern Hemisphere into the broader trajectories of modernism, but also considers ways in which canonical narratives might productively be considered in relation to their antipodean dimensions, thereby opening up modernist narratives to various forms of systematic reversal. Backgazing thus reads canonical authors (Proust, Conrad, Joyce, Woolf, Eliot, Mann, Auden) in relation to Australasian modernist writers (Mansfield, H. H. Richardson, Dark, White, and others), and it considers how the shape of modernism appears different if viewed from an antipodean perspective. It also considers various neglected modernist writers (Cunard, Farrell, Powell, Slessor, R. D. FitzGerald) and suggests how their modernist idiom becomes more recognizable in relation to an aesthetics of backwardness and burlesque.

Gao Xingjian

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jianmei Liu
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Nobel Prize ◽  
Individual Freedom ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Garden Of Eden ◽  
Gao Xingjian ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Nobel Prize Laureate

This chapter looks at how Gao Xingjian, the 2000 Nobel Prize laureate in literature, has brought Zhuangzi’s spirit of absolute liberation and freedom to the highest level. A discussion of his novelSoul Mountainand the poems “As Free as a Bird” and “Roaming Spirit and Metaphysical Thinking” shows how Gao’s self-exile and his persistent pursuit of the aesthetic spirit of literature embody Zhuangzi’s spirit of individual freedom and liberation. By successfully turning the meaning of “exile” from negative to positive, Gao has recreated a nature, or a Garden of Eden, in which he can transcend all kinds of restrictions and wander freely in the literary world. Gao Xingjian’s tropes of fleeing and self-exile, closely associated with his literary works, represent one of the most compelling cases of the interplay between literature and individual freedom at the end of the twentieth century.

Modernist Improvisations

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rob Wallace
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Modernist Literature ◽  
Rabindranath Tagore ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modernist Studies ◽  
Ubiquitous Presence

The ubiquitous presence of improvisation as a practice and a theory in the modernist period has, until relatively recently, been ignored, denied, or deemphasized, specifically in discussions of modernist literature. This chapter explores the complicated history of modernist improvisations in literary texts and posits how a renewed emphasis on improvisation in modernist studies can help us transform our understanding of twentieth century culture. A range of authors and musicians, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Rabindranath Tagore, and Louis Armstrong, among others, are considered, with a focus on the connections between race, jazz, and aesthetics.

scholarly journals New Historicism: Text and Context

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 187
Author(s):  
Violeta M. Vesić
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
Theoretical Approach ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
New Historicism ◽  
Literary Interpretation ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
The Social ◽  
De Man

During most of the twentieth century history was seen as a phenomenon outside of literature that guaranteed the veracity of literary interpretation. History was unique and it functioned as a basis for reading literary works. During the seventies of the twentieth century there occurred a change of attitude towards history in American literary theory, and there appeared a new theoretical approach which soon became known as New Historicism. Since its inception, New Historicism has been identified with the study of Renaissance and Romanticism, but nowadays it has been increasingly involved in other literary trends. Although there are great differences in the arguments and practices at various representatives of this school, New Historicism has clearly recognizable features and many new historicists will agree with the statement of Walter Cohen that New Historicism, when it appeared in the eighties, represented something quite new in reference to the studies of theory, criticism and history (Cohen 1987, 33). Theoretical connection with Bakhtin, Foucault and Marx is clear, as well as a kind of uneasy tie with deconstruction and the work of Paul de Man. At the center of this approach is a renewed interest in the study of literary works in the light of historical and political circumstances in which they were created. Foucault encouraged readers to begin to move literary texts and to link them with discourses and representations that are not literary, as well as to examine the sociological aspects of the texts in order to take part in the social struggles of today.The study of literary works using New Historicism is the study of politics, history, culture and circumstances in which these works were created. With regard to one of the main fact which is located in the center of the criticism, that history cannot be viewed objectively and that reality can only be understood through a cultural context that reveals the work, re-reading and interpretation of literature is not just re-reading of texts that are already well known, but reading in a completely new way.

Martínez Sierra, Gregorio (1881–1947)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Bender
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Publishing House ◽  
Modernist Literature ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Literary Collaboration ◽  
La Rioja ◽  
The University ◽  
Gregorio Martinez

Gregorio Martínez Sierra was a Spanish poet, playwright, and theater director who played a key role in the Spanish theatrical avant-garde and the development of art theater during the early twentieth century. He operated the publishing house Renacimiento, which was responsible for disseminating modernist literature and foreign playwrights throughout Spain. He was married to María de la O Lejárraga (María Martínez Sierra), who was apparently the true author of much of the literature that bears Gregorio’s name. Gregorio Martínez Sierra was born in Madrid in 1881. He briefly studied law and then philology before abandoning the university to dedicate himself to poetry and theater. In 1900 he married María de la O Lejárraga, a teacher and writer from Spain’s La Rioja region. The pair immediately began to collaborate in the writing and publishing of short novels and plays that today carry the name of Gregorio Martínez Sierra. Recent scholarship as well as Lejárraga’s memoirs, however, have shown that María was in fact the main author of the majority of the literature that bears her husband’s name. In 1906 Martínez Sierra fell in love with a young actress in his theater, Catalina Bárcena, though both his marriage and literary collaboration with Lejárraga would continue until Bárcena gave birth to his daughter in 1922. Despite their separation, Lejárraga continued publishing essays and novels pseudonymously under her estranged husband’s name, and curiously no new theatrical plays by "Gregorio Martínez Sierra" would premièr after 1922.

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