More than a century after its beginnings, modernism still has the power to shock, alienate or challenge readers. Modernist art and literature remain thought of as complex and difficult. This introduction explains in a readable, lively style how modernism emerged, how it is defined, and how it developed in different forms and genres. Pericles Lewis offers students a survey of literature and art in England, Ireland and Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century. He also provides an ove...

Modernism arose in a period of accelerating globalization in the late nineteenth century. Modernist writers and artists, while often loyal to their country in times of war, aimed to rise above the national and ideological conflicts of the early twentieth century in service to a cosmopolitan ideal. This Companion explores the international aspects of literary modernism by mapping the history of the movement across Europe and within each country. The essays place the various literary traditi...

The modernist period witnessed attempts to explain religious experience in non-religious terms. Such novelists as Henry James, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and Franz Kafka found methods to describe through fiction the sorts of experiences that had traditionally been the domain of religious mystics and believers. In Religious Experience and the Modernist Novel, Pericles Lewis considers the development of modernism in the novel in relation to changing attitudes to religion. Thr...

The books in this bite-sized new series contain no complicated techniques or tricky materials, making them ideal for the busy, the time-pressured or the merely curious. Nietzsche Made Simple is a short, simple and to-the-point guide to Nietzsche. In just 96 pages, the reader will discover all his ideas, from the Superman to the Will to Power. Ideal for the busy, the time-pressured or the merely curious, Nietzsche Made Simple is a quick, no-effort way to break into this fascinating topic.

Ernst Bloch is perhaps best known for his subtle and imaginative investigation of utopias and utopianism, but his work also provides a comprehensive and insightful analysis of western culture, politics and society. Yet, because he has not been one of easiest of writers to read his full contribution has not been widely acknowledged. Block developed a complex conceptual framework, and presented this in a prose style which many have found to verge on the impenetrable. In this critical and acc...

This Companion has long been a standard introduction to the field. This second edition is updated and enhanced with four new chapters, addressing the key themes being researched, taught and studied in modernism. Its interdisciplinary approach is central to its success as it brings together readings of the many varieties of modernism. Chapters address the major literary genres, the intellectual, religious and political contexts, and parallel developments in film, painting and music. The cat...

In this highly original study Joseph Mali explores how four attentive and inventive readers of Giambattista Vico's New Science (1744) - the French historian Jules Michelet (1798–1874), the Irish writer James Joyce (1882–1941), the German literary scholar Erich Auerbach (1892–1957) and the English philosopher Isaiah Berlin (1909–97) - came to find in Vico's work the inspiration for their own modern theories (or, in the case of Joyce, stories) of human life and history. Mali's reconstruction...

Despite the enormous amount of material on the subject of Nazism, there has been no substantial work on its emblem, the swastika. This original and controversial contribution examines the role that the swastika played in the construction of the Aryan myth in the nineteenth century, and its use in Nazi ideology as a symbol of party, nation and race, treating it as symbolic phenomenon in a cultural context. By identifying the swastika as a boundary or liminal image, Malcolm Quinn allies visu...

“A skilled exploration” of why 6 notable 20th-century philosophers—from Martin Heidegger to Michel Foucault—succumbed to “a narcissistic embrace of totalitarian politics” (The Washington Post).European history of the past century is full of examples of philosophers, writers, and scholars who supported or excused the worst tyrannies of the age. How was this possible? How could intellectuals whose work depends on freedom defend those who would deny it? Here,...

The work of René Girard is hugely influential in literature and cultural studies. But it is in understanding the relationship between religion and violence that his theory has created the greatest impact. Girard’s understanding of mimetic rivalry and conflict and of scapegoating are seen by many to be the key to a completely new understanding of Christianity.Girard’s name evokes curiosity and – often – strong feelings amongst devotees and sceptics. Discovering Girard is the first b...

Is a tower block, your unmade bed, your lavatory basin, or the bicycle chained to the gate next door a work of art? Why should a novel have a beginning, a middle, and an end; or even a story? Whether we recognise it or not, virtually every aspect of our life today has been influenced in part by the aesthetic legacy of Modernism. In this Very Short Introduction Christopher Butler examines how and why Modernism began, explaining what it is and showing how it has gradually informed a...

Eyewitnessing evaluates the place of images among other kinds of historical evidence. By reviewing the many varieties of images by region, period and medium, and looking at the pragmatic uses of images (e.g. the Bayeux Tapestry, an engraving of a printing press, a reconstruction of a building), Peter Burke sheds light on our assumption that these practical uses are ‘reflections’ of specific historical meanings and influences. He also shows how this assumption can be problematic.