Modernism

by Melba Cuddy-Keane, Adam Hammond, and Alexandra Peat

Published 1 January 2014
Guided by the historical semantics developed in Raymond Williams' pioneering study of cultural vocabulary, Modernism: Keywords presents a series of short entries on words used with frequency and urgency in written modernism, tracking cultural and literary debates and transformative moments of change. * Highlights and exposes the salient controversies and changing cultural thought at the heart of modernism * Goes beyond constructions of plural modernisms to reveal all modernist writing as overlapping and interactive in a simultaneous and interlocking mix * Draws from a vast compilation of more than a thousand sources, ranging from vernacular prose to experimental literary forms * Spans the long modernist period, from its incipient beginnings c.1880 to its post-WWII aftermath * Approaches English written modernism in its own terms, tempering explanations of modernism often derived from European poets and painters * Models research techniques based on digital databases and collaborative work in the humanities