Description:
The congeries of experimental movements collectively identified as Modernism, flourishing from prior to World War I until World War II, renegotiated artistic conventions, revived neglected traditions, and turned attention to the primary materials of art (sound, colour, language). In painting emerged a tendency to abstraction, in music a tendency to atonality, and in literature to non‑mimetic forms. Experiments abounded in disjunctive, elliptical, impressionistic, allusive, and mythopoeic styles. Avant‑garde artists organized into numerous schools, including the Imagists, Surrealists, Dadaists, Constructivists, Futurists, and Vorticists. The literature, often produced by expatriates, was cosmopolitan, elitist, and provocative. Much of the most important work, appropriately enough in an era of female enfranchisement, was written by women. It was also the “Jazz Age,” the nexus of which was the Harlem Renaissance. While the course focuses on the lively cross‑fertilization of British and American writing, the international scope of Modernism is also emphasized, as well as its diversity (e.g. in ballet, cinema, music, and painting).
Component(s): Lecture
