1st Edition

The Difficulties of Modernism

By Leonard Diepeveen Copyright 2003
    336 Pages
    by Routledge

    336 Pages
    by Routledge

    In The Difficulties of Modernism, Leonard Diepeveen examines how difficulty became central to our encounters with modern literature and culture. Literary modernism's first readers often complained that difficulty was running rampant in literature, that art had become a plague of unintelligibility. Diepeveen argues that the simultaneous appearance of modernism and discussion about difficulty was not coincidental-difficulty allowed modernism to rise to the status of high art, and it was fundamental to how modernism shaped the canon not only of twentieth-century literature, but of the literature that preceded it. He argues that modernism can be best understood as the moment when knowing how to maneuver through difficult art became the central sign of one's ability to participate in high culture.

    Chapter One: Difficulty as FashonChapter Two: InherenceChapter Three: Professional Romanticism Defending DifficultyChapter Four: Difficulty, Vigor, and PleasureChapter Five: Simplicity, Purity, and the Modern CanonConclusion: Modern Difficulty's Inheritance

    Biography

    Leonard Diepeveen

    "...draw[s] conclusions on how art best serves culture." -- Choice
    "After more than thirty years of continuing Marxist, feminist, postcolonial and postmodernist demystification of modernism and its critical companion, New Criticism, Leonard Diepeveen's book The Difficulties of Modernism returns to the earliest and most persistent attack voiced against modernist art: its difficulty." -- Vivian Liska, Modern Language Quarterly
    "The scope of Diepeveen's book is more than impressive, its stance admirably measured." -- V. Nicholas Lolordo, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Contemporary Literature