Five Faces of Modernity

"Five Faces of Modernity" is a series of semantic and cultural biographies of words that have taken on special significance in the last century and a half or so: "modernity," "avant-garde," "decadence," "kitsch," and "postmodernism." The concept of modernity--the notion that we, the living, are different and somehow superior to our predecessors and that our civilization is like...

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"Five Faces of Modernity" is a series of semantic and cultural biographies of words that have taken on special significance in the last century and a half or so: "modernity," "avant-garde," "decadence," "kitsch," and "postmodernism." The concept of modernity--the notion that we, the living, are different and somehow superior to our predecessors and that our civilization is likely to be succeeded by one even superior to ours--is a relatively recent Western invention and one whose time may already have passed, if we believe its postmodern challengers. Calinescu documents the rise of cultural modernity and, in tracing the shifting senses of the five terms under scrutiny, illustrates the intricate value judgments, conflicting orientations, and intellectual paradoxes to which it has given rise.

"Five Faces of Modernity" attempts to do for the foundations of the modernist critical lexicon what earlier terminological studies have done for such complex categories as "classicism," "baroque," "romanticism," "realism," or "symbolism" and thereby fill a gap in literary scholarship. On another, more ambitious level, Calinescu deals at length with the larger issues, dilemmas, ideological tensions, and perplexities brought about by the assertion of modernity.

Preface to the Second Edition xi
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction 3
The Idea of Modernity
Modern Dwarfs on the Shoulders of Ancient Giants 13
The Problem of Time: Three Eras of Western History 19
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Preface to the Second Edition xi
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction 3
The Idea of Modernity
Modern Dwarfs on the Shoulders of Ancient Giants 13
The Problem of Time: Three Eras of Western History 19
It Is We Who Are the Ancients 23
Comparing the Moderns to the Ancients 26
From Modern to Gothic to Romantic to Modern 35
The Two Modernities 41
Baudelaire and the Paradoxes of Aesthetic Modernity 46
Modernity, the Death of God, and Utopia 58
Literary and Other Modernisms 68
Comparing the Moderns to the Contemporaries 86
The Idea of the Avant-Garde
From Modernity to the Avant-Garde 95
The "Avant-Garde" Metaphor in the Renaissance: A Rhetorical Figure 97
The Romantic "Avant-Garde": From Politics to the Politics of Culture 100
Some Mid-Nineteenth-Century Writers and the Avant-Garde 108
Two Avant-Gardes: Attractions and Repulsions 112
Avant-Garde and Aesthetic Extremism 116
The Crisis of Avant-Garde's Concept in the 1960s 120
Avant-Garde, Dehumanization, and the End of Ideology 125
Avant-Garde and Postmodernism 132
Intellectualism, Anarchism, and Stasis 144
The Idea of Decadence
Versions of Decadence 151
From "Decadence" to "Style of Decadence" 157
The Decadent Euphoria 171
Nietzsche on "Decadence" and "Modernity" 178
The Concept of Decadence in Marxist Criticism 195
Il Decadentismo 211
Kitsch
Kitsch and Modernity 225
Kitsch, Camp, and High Art 229
Etymology, Contexts of Usage, and the "Law of Aesthetic Inadequacy" 232
Kitsch and Romanticism 237
Bad Taste, Ideology, and Hedonism 240
Some Stylistic Considerations 249
Kitsch and Cultural Industrialization 255
The "Kitsch-Man" 259
On Postmodernism (1986)
A New Face of Modernity 265
Epistemology and Hermeneutics: From Modernity to Postmodernity 269
The Silence of the Avant-Garde 275
The Novelty of the Past: The View from Architecture 279
Critiques of Postmodernism 288
Literary Postmodernism: The Shaping of a Corpus 296
Postmodernist Devices and Their Significance 302
Notes 313
Selected Critical Bibliography 365
Index 387
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