Modernism: The Basics provides an accessible overview of the study of modernism in its global dimensions. Examining the key concepts, history and varied forms of the field, it guides the reader through the major approaches, outlining key debates, to answer such questions as: What is modernism? How did modernism begin? Has modernism developed differently in different media? How is it related to postmodernism and postcolonialism? How have politics, urbanization and new technologies affected modernism? With engaging examples from art, literature and historical documents, each chapter provides suggestions for further reading, histories of relevant movements and clear definitions of key terminology, making this an essential guide for anyone approaching the study of modernism for the first time.

Modernism: The Basics provides an accessible overview of the study of modernism in its global dimensions. Examining the key concepts, history and varied forms of the field, it guides the reader through the major approaches, outlining key debates, to answer such questions as: What is modernism? How did modernism begin? Has modernism developed differently in different media? How is it related to postmodernism and postcolonialism? How have politics, urbanization and new technologies affected modernism? With engaging examples from art, literature and historical documents, each chapter provides suggestions for further reading, histories of relevant movements and clear definitions of key terminology, making this an essential guide for anyone approaching the study of modernism for the first time.

Publisher description

This volume combines a clear overview for those with no prior knowledge or experience of modernism with a subtle argument that will appeal to higher level undergraduates and scholars.

This accessible guide provides the ideal first step in understanding literary theory.

It was prominent architect and publicist Felix Novikov (b. 1927) who first coined the term Soviet modernism, which refers to the third, concluding period (1955-85) of Soviet architecture. The value of Novikov’s creative path lies in the fact that it spans the years both before and after Soviet moder­nism. Today, the architect continues to be a prolific writer, critic, and initiator of many inspired ideas that materialize into publications, exhibitions, and conferences. He is the key surviving source for the fullest and most accurate understanding of Soviet architecture after World War II. His principal built works are the Palace of Pioneers in Moscow (1962) and the Science Center of Microelectronics (1969) and Moscow Institute of Electronics (1971) in Zelenograd. His numerous books include Formula of Architecture (1984) and Architects and Architecture (2002).

This concise Companion offers an innovative approach tounderstanding the Modernist literary mind in Britain, focusing onthe intellectual and cultural contexts, which shaped it. Offers an innovative approach to understanding the Modernistliterary mind in Britain. Helps readers to grasp the intellectual and cultural contextsof literary Modernism. Organised around contemporary ideas such as Freudianism andeugenics rather than literary genres. Relates literary Modernism to the overarching issues of theperiod, such as feminism, imperialism and war.

Considering the immense diversity of sub-Saharan Africa's architecture and built realities, does it make sense to speak of an African architecture? How does this differ from archi-tecture in Africa? What does the term architecture actually mean in the African context? And how could these questions be conceptualised while leaving behind pre-existing theoretical moulds and biases? Searching for new ways to theorise sub-Saharan African architecture, this collection of 49 essays broadens and develops the discourse around the architecture of a very rapidly changing continent. Its authors - practising archi--tects and renowned scholars - put forward an array of heterogeneous perspectives, question old tropes and emerg--ing narratives, and challenge popular concepts whilst pro-pos-ing new ones. All with the aim of critically examining and advancing theoretical reflection on African archi-tec-tures, both on the continent and globally.

What exactly is “modernism”? And how and why has its definition changed over time? Modernism: Evolution of an Idea is the first book to trace the development of the term “modernism” from cultural debates in the early twentieth century to the dynamic contemporary field of modernist studies. Rather than assuming and recounting the contributions of modernism's chief literary and artistic figures, this book focuses on critical formulations and reception through topics such as: - The evolution of “modernism” from a pejorative term in intellectual arguments, through its condemnation by Pope Pius X in 1907, and on to its subsequent centrality to definitions of new art by T. S. Eliot, Laura Riding and Robert Graves, F. R. Leavis, Edmund Wilson, and Clement Greenberg - New Criticism and its legacies in the formation of the modernist canon in anthologies, classrooms, and literary histories - The shifting conceptions of modernism during the rise of gender and race studies, French theory, Marxist criticism, postmodernism, and more - The New Modernist Studies and its contemporary engagements with the politics, institutions, and many cultures of modernism internationally With a glossary of key terms and movements and a capacious critical bibliography, this is an essential survey for students and scholars working in modernist studies at all levels.

The Phantom of the Ego is the first comparative study that shows how the modernist account of the unconscious anticipates contemporary discoveries about the importance of mimesis in the formation of subjectivity. Rather than beginning with Sigmund Freud as the father of modernism, Nidesh Lawtoo starts with Friedrich Nietzsche’s antimetaphysical diagnostic of the ego, his realization that mimetic reflexes—from sympathy to hypnosis, to contagion, to crowd behavior—move the soul, and his insistence that psychology informs philosophical reflection. Through a transdisciplinary, comparative reading of landmark modernist authors like Nietzsche, Joseph Conrad, D. H. Lawrence, and Georges Bataille, Lawtoo shows that, before being a timely empirical discovery, the “mimetic unconscious” emerged from an untimely current in literary and philosophical modernism. This book traces the psychological, ethical, political, and cultural implications of the realization that the modern ego is born out of the spirit of imitation; it is thus, strictly speaking, not an ego, but what Nietzsche calls, “a phantom of the ego.” The Phantom of the Ego opens up a Nietzschean back door to the unconscious that has mimesis rather than dreams as its via regia, and argues that the modernist account of the “mimetic unconscious” makes our understanding of the psyche new.