Theorizing the Avant-Garde
Modernism, Expressionism, and the Problem of Postmodernity
Published on 22. April 1999
Book
Hardback
336 pages
978-0-521-63291-1 (ISBN)
Description
In Modernism, Expressionism and Theories of the Avant Garde, Richard Murphy mobilises theories of the postmodern to challenge our understanding of the avant-garde. He assesses the importance of the avant-garde for contemporary culture and for the debates among theorists of postmodernism such as Jameson, Eagleton, Lyotard and Habermas. Murphy reconsiders the classic formulation of the avant-garde in Lukacs and Bloch, especially their discussion of aesthetic autonomy, and investigates the relationship between art and politics via a discussion of Marcuse, Adorno and Benjamin. Combining close textual readings of a wide range of films as well as works of literature, it draws on a rich array of critical theories, such as those of Bakhtin, Todorov, MacCabe, Belsey and Raymond Williams. This interdisciplinary project will appeal to all those interested in modernist and avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century, and provides a critical rethinking of the present-day controversy regarding postmodernity.
Reviews / Votes
"...original and fascinating..." Journal of English and Germanic Philology "Murphy's book nevertheless makes an entirely persuasive and superbly documented case for the continuing impact of the historical avant-garde on the culture of postmodernity." College LiteratureMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 222 mm
Width: 145 mm
Thickness: 23 mm
Weight
606 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-521-63291-1 (9780521632911)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
01/2005
1st Edition
Cambridge University Press
€38.49
Available for download
Person
Content
1. Theories of the avant-garde; 2. Revisions of Buerger's theory; 3. Re-writing the discursive world: revolution and the expressionist avant-garde; 4. Counter-discourses of the avant-garde: Jameson, Bakhtin and the problem of realism; 5. Doeblin and the avant-garde poetics of expressionist prose; 6. Benn: modernity and the double bind of rationality; 7. Bakhtin and double voiced discourse: Doeblin's 'The Murder of a Buttercup' and the double bind; 8. The poetics of hysteria: expressionist drama and the melodramatic imagination; 9. Kafka's photograph of the imaginary: dialogical interplay between realism and the fantastic (the metamorphosis); 10. Weimar silent film and expressionism: representational instability and oppositional discourse in The Cabinet of Dr Caligari; 11. Framing the interpretation: the frame-narrative and the conflict of discourses; 12. Towards a poetic of postmodernism: simulation, the sublime and the expressionist avant-garde; 13. Lyotard's postmodern sublime and Habermas's 'enlightenment project of modernity': modernism, mass culture and the avant-garde; Bibliography.