Toward a Definition of Modernism Essay -- Modernism Opera Literature E

Toward a Definition of ModernismLawrence B. Gamaches article Toward a Definition of Modernism encapsulates in its title the challenges critics piece in their attempts to formulate a coherent theoretical modernist model, though the quintessential modernist works even at the time of this 1987 article are all over sixty years old. Indeed, the sheer number of pedantic books and articles that discuss or contribute to the debate surrounding the definition of contemporaneousness indicates the extent to which modernism is a term whose only non-contentious consensus is that it its meaning is fraught with ambiguity. Susan Stanford Friedmans component to the debate summarizes the theoretical crises thusAs terms in an evolving scholarly discourse, modern, modernity, and modernism constitute a critical Tower of Babel, a blaring of categories that become increasingly useless the more inconsistently they are used. We hobo regard them as a parody of critical discourse in which everyone keeps talking at the same time in a talking to without common meanings. When terms mean radically different or antonymous things to people, then their use appears to threaten the project of scholarship/teaching altogether. (497) clamor aside, because there are some artists, though disparate in ardour and genre, who persistently make it into the debate, and who are universally regarded as modernist, such as T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, Picasso, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, or Frank Lloyd Wright, there must be a unifying or underlying principle that is essentially modernist.Notably, however, the sister humanistic discipline drama and opera are absent from the genres represented by the quintessential modernist works of the artists above. (Although Picasso designed opera ... ... Tradition 2nd Ed. Ed. David Richter. Boston Bedford, 1998. 1127-1141. Mathey, Francois. The Impressionists. Trans. dungaree Steinberg. New York Praeger, 1961. Puchner, Martin. Modernism and Anti-theatricality An Afterw ard. Modern Drama 44.3 (2001) 355-361. Schonberg, Harold C. The Lives of the Great Composers. 1970. London Futura, 1982. Stolba, K Marie. The Development of Western Music A History 2nd Ed. Wisconsin brownness and Benchmark, 1994. Trammell Skaggs, Carmen. Modernitys Revision of the Dancing Daughter The Salome Narrative of Wilde and Strauss. College books 29.3 (2002) 124-139. Yeats, William Butler. My First Meeting with Oscar Wilde. The Trembling of the Veil, in Autobiography. New York Macmillan, 1916. 79-85. Rpt. in Oscar Wilde A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Richard Ellman. New Jersey Prentice, 1969. 9-15.