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

Toward a description of ModernismLawrence B. Gamaches article Toward a Definition of Modernism encapsulates in its title the challenges critics meet in their attempts to formulate a coherent theoretical modernist model, though the quintessential modernist works even at the condemnation of this 1987 article are over sixty years old. Indeed, the sheer number of scholarly books and articles that discuss or contribute to the debate surrounding the definition of modernity 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 contribution 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 cacophony of categories that become increasingly useless the more inconsistently they are used. We squirt regard them as a parody of critical discourse in which everyone keep s talking at the same time in a language without common land meanings. When terms mean radically different or contradictory things to people, then their use appears to threaten the project of scholarship/teaching altogether. (497)Cacophony aside, because there are some artists, though disparate in style 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 bold Lloyd Wright, there must be a unifying or underlying principle that is essentially modernist.Notably, however, the sister arts drama and opera are bump off 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. Jean Steinberg. New York Praeger, 1961. Puchner, Martin. Modernism and Anti-theatricality An Afterward. Modern Dr ama 44.3 (2001) 355-361. Schonberg, Harold C. The Lives of the abundant Composers. 1970. London Futura, 1982. Stolba, K Marie. The Development of Western Music A History 2nd Ed. Wisconsin Brown and Benchmark, 1994. Trammell Skaggs, Carmen. Modernitys Revision of the Dancing Daughter The Salome taradiddle of Wilde and Strauss. College Literature 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.