Modernism

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 Butle...

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 all aspects of 20th and 21st century life. Butler considers several aspects of modernism including some modernist works; movements and notions of the avant garde; and the idea of 'progress' in art. Butler looks at modernist ideas of the self, subjectivity, irrationalism, people and machines, and political definitions of modernism as a whole.

克里斯托弗?巴特勒 牛津大學(xué)基督教會(huì)學(xué)院英語(yǔ)語(yǔ)言文學(xué)教授。著有《闡釋、解構(gòu)與意識(shí)形態(tài)》（1984）、《早期現(xiàn)代主義：歐洲的文學(xué)、音樂(lè)與繪畫(huà)，1900－1916》（1994）、《后現(xiàn)代主義：牛津通識(shí)讀本》（2002）、《現(xiàn)代主義：牛津通識(shí)讀本》（2010）等。