Modernism: A Very Short Introduction

Writers of an Oxford University Press Very Short Introduction have a difficult task on their hands, and this is no exception. Giving a concise explanation of modernism in 136 pages in language that will leave the lay reader informed rather than perplexed is no easy feat. The difficulty is increased by the fact that defining modernism, or any large-scale cultural movement, is almost impossible.

Yet by making this clear at the beginning, Butler — Oxford University Professor of English Literature — ensures that his readers understand what they’re getting into. Modernism, he says, is not “a single centrally defined set of ideas” and nor can it be defined in terms of “strict boundaries”. Instead, his approach is to outline some of the key techniques involved in the stylistic experimentations found in modernist works, and he has produced concise and illuminating sections on allusion, myth, stream of consciousness, epiphany and vision.

Behind this is an explanation of how these techniques fit into the wider context of modernity. “We need to know how these technical changes were driven by new ideas . . . of a revolutionary kind,” he says. By focusing on the relationships between modernism and politics, religion, contemporary attitudes towards history and philosophy, and non-European cultural traditions, he explains the modernist artist’s engagement with these ideas and shows how they shape modernism.

However, the book has one shortcoming. References to “the existentialist liberation from a modernist aesthetic modelling of life” and the “demand for the understanding of art as the exemplar of the hypostastized concepts of a theory” may come as a shock to the average reader with little prior knowledge of modernism.

Nonetheless, the handy summaries at the end of each chapter serve to remedy this potential problem, and the examples of modernist work Butler selects to explain certain theories are both relevant and thought-provoking. Moreover, the selections are original — the more informed reader can enjoy analyses of works that have not already been over-explored by modernist criticism. By analysing Cubist paintings, Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera and ballets by Diaghilev alongside the staples (Ulysses, Jacob’s Room, Women in Love), he emphasises that modernism is more than a literary movement, but encompasses many different art forms. His exploration of the interconnectedness of these art forms demonstrates the collaborative nature of modernism.

He explains: “It is this kind of co-operation between artists which gave to them, and to us, the sense of a modernist movement.” Through its concise language, well-chosen examples, free-flowing chapters and original close readings, the book enhances the reader’s sense of modernism as a distinct and important movement, one which we may not be able to define, but can certainly understand.