DOCSLIB.ORG

Seeing Subjects: Recognition, Identity, and Visual Cultures in Literary Modernism

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Seeing Subjects: Recognition, Identity, and Visual Cultures in Literary Modernism University of Kentucky UKnowledge University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2011 SEEING SUBJECTS: RECOGNITION, IDENTITY, AND VISUAL CULTURES IN LITERARY MODERNISM George Micajah Phillips University of Kentucky, [email protected] Right click to open a feedback form in a new tab to let us know how this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Phillips, George Micajah, "SEEING SUBJECTS: RECOGNITION, IDENTITY, AND VISUAL CULTURES IN LITERARY MODERNISM" (2011). University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations. 221. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/gradschool_diss/221 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at UKnowledge. It has been accepted for inclusion in University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of UKnowledge. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION George Micajah Phillips The Graduate School University of Kentucky 2011 SEEING SUBJECTS: RECOGNITION, IDENTITY, AND VISUAL CULTURES IN LITERARY MODERNISM ____________________________________ ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION ____________________________________ A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Kentucky By George Micajah Phillips Lexington, Kentucky Director: Dr. Jonathan Allison, Associate Professor of English Lexington, Kentucky 2011 Copyright © George Micajah Phillips 2011 ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION SEEING SUBJECTS: RECOGNITION, IDENTITY, AND VISUAL CULTURES IN LITERARY MODERNISM Seeing Subjects plots a literary history of modern Britain that begins with Dorian Gray obsessively inspecting his portrait’s changes and ends in Virginia Woolf’s visit to the cinema where she found audiences to be “savages watching the pictures.” Focusing on how literature in the late-19th and 20th centuries regarded images as possessing a shaping force over how identities are understood and performed, I argue that modernists in Britain felt mediated images were altering, rather than merely representing, British identity. As Britain’s economy expanded to unprecedented imperial reach and global influence, new visual technologies also made it possible to render images culled from across the British world—from its furthest colonies to darkest London—to the small island nation, deeply and irrevocably complicating British identity. In response, Oscar Wilde, Joseph Conrad, T. S. Eliot, and others sought to better understand how identity was recognized, particularly visually. By exploring how painting, photography, colonial exhibitions, and cinema sought to manage visual representations of identity, these modernists found that recognition began by acknowledging the familiar but also went further to acknowledge what was strange and new as well. Reading recognition and misrecognition as crucial features of modernist texts, Seeing Subjects argues for a new understanding of how modernism’s formal experimentation came to be and for how it calls for responses from readers today. KEYWORDS: British modernism; recognition; visual culture; British national culture; social class in London _ George Micajah Phillips _____ Student’s Signature __________June 24, 2011____________ Date SEEING SUBJECTS: RECOGNITION, IDENTITY, AND VISUAL CULTURES IN LITERARY MODERNISM By George Micajah Phillips __ __Jonathan Allison _________ Director of Dissertation __ __Virginia Blum _________ Director of Graduate Studies __________June 24, 2011____________ Date RULES FOR THE USE OF DISSERTATIONS Unpublished dissertations submitted for the Doctor’s degree and deposited in the University of Kentucky Library are as a rule open for inspection, but are to be used only with due regard to the rights of the authors. Bibliographical references may be noted, but quotations or summaries of parts may be published only with the permission of the author, and with the usual scholarly acknowledgments. Extensive copying or publication of the dissertation in whole or in part also requires the consent of the Dean of the Graduate School of the University of Kentucky. A library that borrows this dissertation for use by its patrons is expected to secure the signature of each user. Name Date ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ DISSERTATION George Micajah Phillips The Graduate School University of Kentucky 2011 SEEING SUBJECTS: RECOGNITION, IDENTITY, AND VISUAL CULTURES IN LITERARY MODERNISM ____________________________________ DISSERTATION ____________________________________ A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Kentucky By George Micajah Phillips Lexington, Kentucky Director: Dr. Jonathan Allison, Associate Professor of English Lexington, Kentucky 2011 Copyright © George Micajah Phillips 2011 For Tiffany insieme per sempre ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS As with its close companion, recognition, one begins the process of acknowledgement aware that it may never be completed. So it is without the pretense of finality but in hope of a promising beginning that I take my first steps here in speaking the depths of my gratitude for the many teachers, formal and otherwise, who have made this project richer and better than I could have done alone. In small and innumerable ways, this dissertation can be traced back to those teachers who introduced me to many of the writers, works, and theorists that appear here. From Arthur Brown, Tony Cuda, Pat Cahill, Cathy Caruth, Bill Hemminger, Barbara Ladd, James Morey, Anne Padilla, Leigh Partington Tillman, and Hillary Smith, I have learned more than I can name, not least of which is that writing about literature begins with the attempt at capturing its complexities on its own terms. Over the course of this project, my director, Jonathan Allison, offered exacting readings, vibrant enthusiasm, an immense memory of literary history, and an open office door. For that, and much more, I am deeply grateful to him. Ellen Rosenman and Michael Trask made this project’s arguments and the research behind them better with their erudition, probing questions, and the graceful support with which they greeted my ungainly attempts to live up to their challenges. Wallis Miller’s interest in literature and enthusiasm for the study of visual material helped inspire a project that could reach across disciplines. Pearl James and Peter Kalliney have been irreproachable models for scholarship, teaching, and friendship to boot. I have been fortunate in cultivating many friendships while in graduate school which I hope will continue to flourish in the years to come. This project would have been unimaginable without the company and hospitality of Andrew Battista, Matt Feinberg, iii Colleen Glenn, Josh Reid, and Aparajita Sengupta. The same is true for Jonathan Sircy, who also went above the call of friendship to read and comment on more of this project than anyone outside my committee. Our homes are our first schools, and what I owe to the teachers I have found there is beyond words. Long before I learned to read critically, I had the great fortune to grow up surrounded by parents, grandparents, siblings, uncles, aunts, and cousins whose appreciation for stories—how to tell them, listen to them, and live with them—has been one of the great pleasures of my life. My parents, Faye and J. K., have been encouraging, loving, and singularly supportive in every imaginable way at every step of my education. They have been my first and my best teachers. Gary and Gayle Lauderdale have been a second set of parents, models of patience, kindness, and munificence on so many occasions. No one knows how to deflate a burden, or an ego, better than siblings, and Carson and James always had a kind word and a wry comment ready for both. My daughter, Auden, from whom I have learned so much already, is usually quick to remind me of two things: by telling me that God’s presence is always with me, even if I do not know or feel it, and by showing me again and again the powerful simplicity of being present with each another. With the rare and unspeakable joy she inspires in thousands of small ways, I am often breathless. And, at last, there is Tiffany, without whom I could not have come to know the best ways to celebrate, to parent, to take a photograph, to argue fairly, to read carefully, to live generously, to love unconditionally, to be kind, and, simply, to be. With love, gratitude, and ceaseless awe, this dissertation is dedicated to her. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................... iii List of Figures ..................................................................................................................
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Idea of the West in the Magic Mountain Literary and Cultural Approaches
    Master of Arts Thesis Euroculture University of Groningen Palacký University of Olomouc March 2012 Idea of The West in The Magic Mountain Literary and Cultural Approaches Submitted by: Gonca Topal S2043831 Supervised by: Professor W.E. Krul Dr. Jozef Matula Goettingen, Germany 20.03.2012 Table of Contents I. Introduction …....................................................................................... 1 I.i.Introduction to the Novel and Translations ........................................... 2 I.ii Methods of Analysis …......................................................................... 3 I.iii Specific Approach to the Novel and Past Studies ..….......................... 5 I.iv Defining 'The West' Through Literature …................….................... 8 II. Settembrini and Castorp …..................................................................... 11 II.i Initial Impressions on Settembrini …................................................... 11 II.ii Castorp's Links to Mann …................................................................. 14 II.ii.i Tradition …................................................................................ 16 II.iii Settembrini the Pedagogue …............................................................ 18 II.iii.i Classicism …............................................................................. 19 II.iv The Initial Advice …........................................................................... 19 II.v Settembrini's Links to Mann …..........................................................
    [Show full text]
  • RILKE and the MODERNIST TRADITION: a BRIEF LOOK at “ARCHAIC TORSO of ••• APOLLO”* Pyeaam ABBASI**
    Uluslararası Sosyal Araştırmalar Dergisi The Journal of International Social Research Cilt: 6 Sayı: 24 Volume: 6 Issue: 24 Kış 2013 Winter 2013 www.sosyalarastirmalar.com Issn: 1307-9581 RILKE AND THE MODERNIST TRADITION: A BRIEF LOOK AT “ARCHAIC TORSO OF ••• APOLLO”* Pyeaam ABBASI** Abstract The twentieth century is associated with drastic changes as well as disintegration of old beliefs and grand narratives. Modern poets felt that it was high time they searched for new potentialities of language and made changes in form in order to express and explore changes the world was experiencing. The oneness of the world within and the world without is not peculiar to Rilke. He explores human consciousness as well as the interaction between human and the non-human world. This paper argues that his poetry is an invitation to the reader to participate and create. In “Archaic Torso of Apollo” the transfixed poet finds the torso full of life and vitality, a complete work of art and suggestive of the modernist tradition. As a modern poet Rilke would see the world within and the world without as the same aspects of each other. He believes that existence consists of interactions between things and the perceiving selves and that the inner world, familiar to our consciousness, is continuous with, even identical to, the material world we think of as exterior to our conscious selves. The interaction between the poet (subject) and the torso (subject) creates the sense of transformation. The article concludes that transformation seems to be the most critical change that the modern man needs to experience in the chaotic and disjointed world of the 20 th century.
    [Show full text]
  • Modernist Permabulations Through Time and Space
    Journal of the British Academy, 4, 197–219. DOI 10.5871/jba/004.197 Posted 18 October 2016. © The British Academy 2016 Modernist perambulations through time and space: From Enlightened walking to crawling, stalking, modelling and street-walking Lecture in Modern Languages read 19 May 2016 ANNE FUCHS Fellow of the Academy Abstract: Analysing diverse modes of walking across a wide range of texts from the Enlightenment period and beyond, this article explores how the practice of walking was discovered by philosophers, educators and writers as a rich discursive trope that stood for competing notions of the morally good life. The discussion proceeds to then investigate how psychological, philosophical and moral interpretations of bad prac- tices of walking in particular resurface in texts by Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann and the interwar writer Irmgard Keun. It is argued that literary modernism transformed walking from an Enlightenment trope signifying progress into the embodiment of moral and epistemological ambivalence. In this process, walking becomes an expression of the disconcerting experience of modernity. The paper concludes with a discussion of walking as a gendered performance: while the male walkers in the modernist texts under discussion suffer from a bad gait that leads to ruination, the new figure of the flâneuse manages to engage in pleasurable walking by abandoning the Enlightenment legacy of the good gait. Keywords: modes of walking, discursive trope, Enlightenment discourse, modernism, modernity, moral and epistemological ambivalence, gender, flâneuse. Walking on one’s two legs is an essential but ordinary skill that, unlike cycling, skate-boarding, roller-skating or ballroom dancing, does not require special proficiency, aptitude or thought—unless, of course, we are physically impaired.
    [Show full text]
  • The Style of Video Games Graphics: Analyzing the Functions of Visual Styles in Storytelling and Gameplay in Video Games
    The Style of Video Games Graphics: Analyzing the Functions of Visual Styles in Storytelling and Gameplay in Video Games by Yin Wu B.A., (New Media Arts, SIAT) Simon Fraser University, 2008 Thesis Submitted In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the School of Interactive Arts and Technology Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology Yin Wu 2012 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY Fall 2012 Approval Name: Yin Wu Degree: Master of Arts Title of Thesis: The Style of Video Games Graphics: Analyzing the Functions of Visual Styles in Storytelling and Gameplay in Video Games Examining Committee: Chair: Carman Neustaedter Assistant Professor School of Interactive Arts & Technology Simon Fraser University Jim Bizzocchi, Senior Supervisor Associate Professor School of Interactive Arts & Technology Simon Fraser University Steve DiPaola, Supervisor Associate Professor School of Interactive Arts & Technology Simon Fraser University Thecla Schiphorst, External Examiner Associate Professor School of Interactive Arts & Technology Simon Fraser University Date Defended/Approved: October 09, 2012 ii Partial Copyright Licence iii Abstract Every video game has a distinct visual style however the functions of visual style in game graphics have rarely been investigated in terms of medium-specific design decisions. This thesis suggests that visual style in a video game shapes players’ gaming experience in terms of three salient dimensions: narrative pleasure, ludic challenge, and aesthetic reward. The thesis first develops a context based on the fields of aesthetics, art history, visual psychology, narrative studies and new media studies. Next it builds an analytical framework with two visual styles categories containing six separate modes. This research uses examples drawn from 29 games to illustrate and to instantiate the categories and the modes.
    [Show full text]
  • GSAS Dissertation Kurianowicz Letzte Version
    The Unknown Future: Premonitions between Prophecy and Pathology, 1750 to 1850 Tomasz Kurianowicz Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy under the Executive Committee of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2020 © 2020 Tomasz Kurianowicz All Rights Reserved Abstract The Unknown Future. Premonitions between Prophecy and Pathology, 1750 to 1850 Tomasz Kurianowicz My dissertation The Unknown Future examines the notion of Ahnung or Ahndung (in English: premonition) in German literature, philosophy, anthropology, and the sciences around 1800. Focusing on the heated debates among philosophers, writers and intellectuals as to whether humans can attain knowledge about the future, I trace the notion of Ahnung as it traverses various discourses. In doing so, I draw on Stephen Greenblatt’s idea of a new historicism and expand studies written by Stefan Andriopoulos, Joseph Vogl, Eva Horn, Michael Gamper and other scholars, explicitly referring to and expanding the literary theory concerning “poetologies of knowledge.“ Specifically I show how after 1750 religious models of prophecy were no longer easily accepted. At the same time, new statistical and mathematical models of prognosis were rising -- even as doubts remained about their ability to fully grasp the progression of time. Within these conflicts between traditional religious models and the new exact sciences, the concept of ‘premonition’ seemed to offer various thinkers and writers evidence for a prognostic capability of the soul that challenged rational, mathematical and statistical models of probability as the sole means for predicting the future. The hope was that premonitions could provide a supersensory knowledge based on fleeting, opaque glimpses into the progression of time.
    [Show full text]
  • Populist Zeitgeist
    Cas Mudde1 The Populist Zeitgeist Populism seems to become stronger the more intellectuals criticize it.2 SINCE THE 1980S THE RISE OF SO-CALLED ‘POPULIST PARTIES’ HAS GIVEN rise to thousands of books, articles, columns and editorials. Most of them are of an alarming nature, as these ‘new populists’ are gener- ally seen as a threat to liberal democracy. Though authors are not always sure what exactly characterizes these parties, they do agree that parties like the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), the French National Front (FN), or the Dutch List Pim Fortuyn (LPF) are ‘pop- ulist’. Another point on which most commentators agree is that ‘populism is understood as a pathological form, pseudo- and post- democratic, produced by the corruption of democratic ideals.’3 German scholars in particular consider right-wing populists, in line with the theory of Erwin K. Scheuch and Hans-Dieter Klingemann, to be a ‘normal pathology’ of western democracies.4 1 Earlier versions of this article have been presented to the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences of the University of Antwerp, the Department of Politics of the Univer- sity of Reading and at the workshop ‘Populism and Democracy’ at the University of Nottingham. I want to thank all participants for their comments. In addition, I want to thank Hans-Georg Betz, Dani Filc and Peter Mair for their valuable comments on earlier versions. Special thanks go to Jan Jagers, whose intellectual input has been crucial in the final revisions. Finally, I am grateful for the generous financial support from the British Academy and the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland.
    [Show full text]
  • Modern Architecture & Ideology: Modernism As a Political Tool in Sweden and the Soviet Union
    Momentum Volume 5 Issue 1 Article 6 2018 Modern Architecture & Ideology: Modernism as a Political Tool in Sweden and the Soviet Union Robert Levine University of Pennsylvania Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/momentum Recommended Citation Levine, Robert (2018) "Modern Architecture & Ideology: Modernism as a Political Tool in Sweden and the Soviet Union," Momentum: Vol. 5 : Iss. 1 , Article 6. Available at: https://repository.upenn.edu/momentum/vol5/iss1/6 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/momentum/vol5/iss1/6 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Modern Architecture & Ideology: Modernism as a Political Tool in Sweden and the Soviet Union Abstract This paper examines the role of architecture in the promotion of political ideologies through the study of modern architecture in the 20th century. First, it historicizes the development of modern architecture and establishes the style as a tool to convey progressive thought; following this perspective, the paper examines Swedish Functionalism and Constructivism in the Soviet Union as two case studies exploring how politicians react to modern architecture and the ideas that it promotes. In Sweden, Modernism’s ideals of moving past “tradition,” embracing modernity, and striving to improve life were in lock step with the folkhemmet, unleashing the nation from its past and ushering it into the future. In the Soviet Union, on the other hand, these ideals represented an ideological threat to Stalin’s totalitarian state. This thesis or dissertation is available in Momentum: https://repository.upenn.edu/momentum/vol5/iss1/6 Levine: Modern Architecture & Ideology Modern Architecture & Ideology Modernism as a Political Tool in Sweden and the Soviet Union Robert Levine, University of Pennsylvania C'17 Abstract This paper examines the role of architecture in the promotion of political ideologies through the study of modern architecture in the 20th century.
    [Show full text]
  • Modernism and Identity in the Indian Subcontinent: a Sketch of Minnette De Silva and Her Works
    Modernism and Identity in the Indian Subcontinent: A Sketch of Minnette de Silva and her Works A thesis submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Cincinnati in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Architecture In the School of Architecture and Interior design of the College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning By Anam Akhter (B.Arch) M.S. Architecture University of Cincinnati July 2018 Committee Chair: Jeff Tilman, PhD Committee Member: Rebecca Williamson, PhD i /Abstract Problem: How does national politics affect architecture and how are architects an important influence in not only the design process (as an opposition to the prevalence of ‘process’ in architectural design), but also as politically conscious individuals that can determine and act on social issues and make an impact or contribution? The Thesis focuses on the life and work of post-independent Sri Lanka’s first Modernist architect Ms. Minnette de Silva and her contribution to Regional Modernism which was an attempt to synthesize modernism with vernacular forms and crafts of the country. By looking at de Silva’s work through several lenses like national politics, identity issues, Modernism & CIAM, it will be shown how crucial developments in architecture have taken place (and could take place in the future), due to these influences, and the agency of the architect. More specifically, it will be shown how the question of IDENTITY came about in politics and hence in architecture (due to the influence of the Indian Independence movement whose ethos lay in asserting an ‘Indian-ness’ that was radically different from the colonial power), how de Silva asserted herself as a new voice in Sri Lankan architecture as a modernist trained form the AA, and how the identity of de Silva touched aspects of the ‘exotic’ – which has political connotations in itself, and how modernism figured out in her designs that sought to be modern as well as regional.
    [Show full text]
  • The Romantic Era: Beginnings and Endings
    Chapter 23 – The Romantic Era: Beginnings and Endings Illustration 1: "Symphony in White", James McNeil Whistler, 1862 If one were to try to sum up the zeitgeist of the Romantic Era in one phrase, it would be difficult to find a better one than simply, "the celebration of the individual". Not the mysterious and supernatural power of the Church; the individual. Not the grandiosity of the monarchy or even the hope of a representative government; the individual. Not the promise of reason and logic, not the potential of science and industry, not even the common bond of everyman; it is the individual whose voice we hear in the music and art. It is now the individual who is telling his own story and leading us to see the world through his own eyes. How did this happen? Great music and great art always tell stories on many levels. Certainly on one level, the spirit of the artist always speaks in his own unique voice. It is extremely difficult for a creative artist to remove himself from his artistic work—and a few have actually tried. Often the surface story is fairly obvious. A great deal of Medieval music—being religious—is about the Church. In it you can hear the great mysteries, the celebrations, the fears, the faith. Compare that with the modern era, where one can often hear the sense of excitement, confusion, and frustration with technology that seems to have taken over.i In a later era, the story being told is one of the grandeur of royalty, of the glory of the absolute monarchs.
    [Show full text]
  • The Psychology of Creativity
    History of Creativity Research 1 The Psychology of Creativity: A Historical Perspective Dean Keith Simonton, PhD Professor of Psychology University of California, Davis Davis, CA 95616-8686 USA Presented at the Green College Lecture Series on The Nature of Creativity: History Biology, and Socio-Cultural Dimensions, University of British Columbia, 2001. Originally planned to be a chapter in an edited volume by the same name, but those plans were usurped by the events following the 9/11 terrorist attack, which occurred the day immediately after. History of Creativity Research 2 The Psychology of Creativity: A Historical Perspective Psychologists usually define creativity as the capacity to produce ideas that are both original and adaptive. In other words, the ideas must be both new and workable or functional. Thus, creativity enables a person to adjust to novel circumstances and to solve problems that unexpectedly arise. Obviously, such a capacity is often very valuable in everyday life. Yet creativity can also result in major contributions to human civilization. Examples include Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and Darwin’s Origin of Species. One might conclude from these observations that creativity has always been one of the central topics in the field. But that is not the case. Although psychology became a formal discipline in the last few decades of the 19th century, it took several generations before the creativity attracted the attention it deserves. This neglect was even indicated in the 1950 Presidential Address that J. P. Guilford delivered before the American Psychological Association. Nevertheless, in the following half century the field could claim two professional journals – the Journal of Creative Behavior and the Creativity Research Journal – several handbooks (e.g., Sternberg, 1999), and even a two-volume Handbook of Creativity (Runco & Pritzker, 1999).
    [Show full text]
  • The Mind of the Modernist Scaff, Lawrence A
    www.ssoar.info The Mind of the Modernist Scaff, Lawrence A. Postprint / Postprint Zeitschriftenartikel / journal article Zur Verfügung gestellt in Kooperation mit / provided in cooperation with: www.peerproject.eu Empfohlene Zitierung / Suggested Citation: Scaff, L. A. (2005). The Mind of the Modernist. Time & Society, 14(1), 5-23. https:// doi.org/10.1177/0961463X05049947 Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Dieser Text wird unter dem "PEER Licence Agreement zur This document is made available under the "PEER Licence Verfügung" gestellt. Nähere Auskünfte zum PEER-Projekt finden Agreement ". For more Information regarding the PEER-project Sie hier: http://www.peerproject.eu Gewährt wird ein nicht see: http://www.peerproject.eu This document is solely intended exklusives, nicht übertragbares, persönliches und beschränktes for your personal, non-commercial use.All of the copies of Recht auf Nutzung dieses Dokuments. Dieses Dokument this documents must retain all copyright information and other ist ausschließlich für den persönlichen, nicht-kommerziellen information regarding legal protection. You are not allowed to alter Gebrauch bestimmt. Auf sämtlichen Kopien dieses Dokuments this document in any way, to copy it for public or commercial müssen alle Urheberrechtshinweise und sonstigen Hinweise purposes, to exhibit the document in public, to perform, distribute auf gesetzlichen Schutz beibehalten werden. Sie dürfen dieses or otherwise use the document in public. Dokument nicht in irgendeiner Weise abändern, noch dürfen By using this particular document, you accept the above-stated Sie dieses Dokument für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke conditions of use. vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, aufführen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. Mit der Verwendung dieses Dokuments erkennen Sie die Nutzungsbedingungen an. Diese Version ist zitierbar unter / This version is citable under: https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-223033 The Mind of the Modernist Simmel on time Lawrence A.
    [Show full text]
  • Halliwell, Martin. "Modernism and Adaptation."
    6 MARTIN HALLIWELL Modernism and adaptation Film adaptation has always had a love–hate relationship with literary mod- ernism. A creative union seemed almost certain in the 1910s and 1920s, though. Modernist writers were fascinated with visual media; German the- orist Walter Benjamin proclaimed film the definitive modern form; and the modernist magazine Close Up (1927–33) was forging aesthetic links between film and literary culture ‘‘from the angles of art, experiment, and possibi- lity.’’1 The energies of literary and cinematic modernism in the years either side of World War I promised an imaginative movement beyond the limits of written and visual forms. Many modernist writers could be ‘‘profoundly cinematic even when not fully cognizant of it’’; filmmakers such as D. W. Griffith, Georges Me´lie`s and Eric von Stroheim were drawn to the written word because it lent early cinema aesthetic validity; and two 1928 versions of The Fall of the House of Usher by French director Jean Epstein and American team James Sibley Watson Jr. and Melville Webber showed what could be achieved by transforming Edgar Allan Poe’s gothic tale into visually provo- cative cinema.2 However, when it comes to cinematic adaptations of modernist fiction filmmakers have often found themselves faced with major technical pro- blems. Critics Gilberto Perez and Sam Girgus have argued that these pro- blems derive from the way in which modernist culture exacerbates the tension between film as a ‘‘reflective’’ form (representing and documenting) and a ‘‘creative’’ medium (reworking and transforming).3 This tension is true of all adaptations, but is particularly acute within the framework of modern- ism for three main reasons.
    [Show full text]