Theorizing the Avant-Garde: Modernism, Expressionism, and the Problem of Postmodernity

Literature, Culture, Theory

by Richard Murphy

In Theorizing the Avant-Garde Richard Murphy mobilizes theories of the postmodern to challenge our understanding of the avant-garde and assesses its importance for the debates among theorists of postmodernism such as Jameson, Eagleton, Lyotard and Habermas. Murphy reconsiders the classic formulations of the avant-garde and investigates the relationship between art and politics via a discussion of Marcuse, Adorno and Benjamin. Combining close textual readings of a wide range of films as well as works of literature, this interdisciplinary project will appeal to all those interested in twentieth-century modernist movements and postmodernity.

336 pages, Paperback

First published April 21, 1995

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Richard Murphy was one of Ireland’s most distinguished poets. He is particularly known for poems that draw on the landscape and history of the west of Ireland. His Collected Poems (Gallery Press) was published in 2000, his acclaimed autobiography The Kick (Granta Books) in 2003. His awards include the Cheltenham Award and the American-Irish Foundation Award.

‘Richard Murphy’s verse is classical in a way that demonstrates what the classical strengths really are. It combines a high music with simplicity, force and directness in dealing with the world of action. He has the gift of epic objectivity: behind his poems we feel not the assertion of his personality, but the actuality of events, the facts and sufferings of history’ (Ted Hughes).

Source: http://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/SeamusHe...

Reviews

[skylar lokota]

I am not a film expert so I will not be rating this book! I thought the reading experience was ok. I would not pick this up on my own, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

[Aileen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting attempt at revising Burger's theory of the avant-garde. However, it does so by weirdly valorizing the expressionist movement as the greatest version of the avant-garde, and by insisting on some rather outdated thinking about the ways in which Modernism relates to the avant-garde. I do like the idea of revising Burger's notion of autonomous art, but I think maybe some examples of what a 'de-aestheticized autonomous art' might look like are necessary before we can throw away Burger's conflicted term.