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Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism Paperback – 1 Jun. 1987

by Matei Calinescu (Author)

4.6 19 ratings

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.

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From the Back Cover

The author discusses with remarkable insight and subtlety the complex relationships among concepts which are commonly used but rarely precisely defined...in doing so, he makes a significant contribution to contemporary scholarship and criticism.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Duke University Press; 2nd Revised ed. edition (1 Jun. 1987)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 412 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0822307677
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0822307679
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 13.97 x 2.62 x 20.96 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 1,226,570 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 1,112 in Architecture References
- 1,310 in Philosophical Aesthetics
- 3,281 in Media Studies (Books)

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4.6 19 ratings

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Matei Călinescu

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Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 6 October 2022

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Possibly the most important ‘summary’ of modernism I have read.

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