To browse Academia. Critical Theory Handbooks Each volume in the Critical Theory Handbooks series features a collection of newly-commissioned essays exploring the use of contemporary critical theory in the study of a given period, and the ways in which the period serves as a site for interrogating and reframing the practices of modern scholars and theorists. The volumes are organized around a set of key terms that demonstrate the engagement by literary scholars with current critical trends, and aim to increase the visibility of theoretically-oriented and-informed work in literary studies, both within the discipline and to students and scholars in other areas.
The large body of critical work centred on modernism and postmodernism, which has seen the light of day in the twentieth century and the first years of the twentieth first, is simply impressive. What partly accounts for such extensive and ever proliferating critical responses to the two cultural and aesthetic movements may be connected, on one level at least, to the lack of consensus and the intense debate carried out among commentators with regard to their meaning and politics.
As terms, modernism and postmodernism have infiltrated the professional idioms of a variety of disciplinary fields, from literature, art and philosophy to architecture, film and cultural analysis. They are, however, often interpreted multiply in their various contexts, decoded as they are in ways that address very specific, field-bound issues and problems.
What is more, their definitional limits are further stretched by the ongoing revision to which they have been subjected since at least the s, as new Modernism is one of the most significant and informative books written in the field of literary theory and criticism. It is an easy-access, wide-ranging and efficient book that tries to explore different aspects of Modernism and its neighboring concepts. Despite its limited space, it has fully rendered the humongous burden of Modernism and demonstrating its various aspects.
The book comprises an introduction and three main chapters. It starts off with a set of definitions for Romance, Realism, Modernism, and Postmodernism. Childs endeavors to approach the discussion in a comparative light, particularly the comparison between Modernism and Postmodernism in the introduction. The book is more concerned with the close analysis of movements in contexts and literary works rather than entangling with pure abstract definitions.
