Modernism
Jean-Michel Rabaté profile
M 2-5:00
This course will set out to define modernism in a broad philosophical and historical context. The main textbook we will start from is the comprehensive anthology of sources and documents Modernism edited by Kolocotrouni, Goldman and Taxidou (1998). We will follow its main articulations, from "the emergence of the modern", to "Modern aesthetics", "The Avant-garde", "Manifestoes" and what can be called the "late modernism" of the 1930s. We will explore the cultural tensions that dominated the turn of the last century and survey works by Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Bergson so as to define a "philosophy of modernism". We will then focus on three works in order to understand how modernism was the result of a productive interaction between literature, the arts and philosophy: Mina Loy's Lunar Baedecker, Ezra Pound's Selected Poems and Wyndham Lewis's Tarr. Requirements for the course include two papers of eight pages, one oral presentation and a final research paper of fifteen pages. No final exam.
updated 2006-10-17
