Matei Calinescu, Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism,
Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism. Durham: Duke University
Press, 1987. 395p.
A study of the meanings of the words as applied to the arts.
THE IDEA OF MODERNITY
AH
Modern Dwarfs on
the Shoulders of Ancient Giants
The Problem
of Time: Three Eras of Western History
It is We Who Are
the Ancients
Comparing the Moderns
to the Ancients
From Modern
to Gothic to Romantic to Modern
The Two Modernities
Baudelaire and the
Paradox of Aesthetic Modernity
Modernity, the Death
of God, and Utopia
Literary and Other
Modernisms
Comparing
the Moderns to the Contemporaries
THE IDEA OF THE AVANT-GARDE
AH
From Modernity to
the Avant-Garde
The "Avant-Garde"
Metaphor in the Renaissance: A Rhetorical Figure
The Romantic "Avante-Garde":
From Politics to the Politics of Culture
Some Mid-Ninettenth-Century
Writers and the Avant-Garde
Two Avant-Gardes:
Attractions and Repulsions
Avant Garde and
Aesthetic Extremism
The Crisis
of Avant-Garde's Concept in the 1960s
Avant-Garde, Dehumanization
and the End of Ideology
Avant-Garde and
Postmodernism
Intellectualism,
Anarchism, and Stasis
THE IDEA OF DECADENCE
Versions of Decadence
From "Decadence"
to "Style of Decadence"
The Decadent Euphoria
Nietzsche on "Decadence"
and "Modernity"
The Concept of Decadence
in Marxist Criticism
Il Decadentismo
Kitsch and Modernity
Kitsch, Camp, and
High Art
Etymology, Contexts of Usage, and the "Law of
Aesthetic Inadequacy"
Kitsch and Romanticism
Bad Taste, Ideology, and Hedonism
Some Stylistic Considerations
Kitsch and Cultural Industrialization
The "Kitsch-Man"
ON POSTMODERNISM (1986)
AH AH
A New Face of Modernity
Epistemology and Hermeneutics: From Modernity
to Postmodernity
The Silence of the Avant-Garde
The Novelty of the Past: The View from Architecture
Critiques of Postmodernism
Literary Postmodernism: The Shaping of a Corpus
Postmodernist Devices and Their Significance
Conclusion
Links and Abbreviations (links are abbreviated by using the initials)