Modernism

Modernism constitutes one of the most prominent fields of literary studies today. It is, however, a field that stands in a very ambiguous relationship to the present literary and cultural situation. Perhaps this is indeed one reason for the current vitality of modernist studies that can be observed on both sides of the Atlantic. Scholars and critics are seeking to draw a balance sheet with modernism, but there is still a great deal of basic disagreement about how to “settle” it as a historical category.

One may even ask: has modernism come to an end? There are certainly those who do not hesitate to answer this question affirmatively,
pointing out that the central modernist literary works are by now “modern classics,” that term being indicative of the way in which modernism now belongs to the past, to tradition. There are even critics — perhaps primarily those speaking from within a British horizon — who would say that modernism came to an end around 1930 (see the historical parameters of the seminal 1976 anthology Modernism: 1890–1930, edited by Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane). For others this is not the case at all. Read the ebook here.