Guided by the historical semantics developed in Raymond Williams' pioneering study of cultural vocabulary, Modernism: Keywords presents a series of short entries on words used with frequency and urgency in "written modernism," tracking cultural and literary debates and transformative moments of change.
* Highlights and exposes the salient controversies and changing cultural thought at the heart of modernism
* Goes beyond constructions of "plural modernisms" to reveal all modernist writing as overlapping and interactive in a simultaneous and interlocking mix
* Draws from a vast compilation of more than a thousand sources, ranging from vernacular prose to experimental literary forms
* Spans the "long" modernist period, from its incipient beginnings c.1880 to its post-WWII aftermath
* Approaches English written modernism in its own terms, tempering explanations of modernism often derived from European poets and painters
* Models research techniques based on digital databases and collaborative work in the humanities
Modernism: Keywords presents a series of short entries explaining the diverse and often contradictory meanings of words used with frequency and urgency in "written modernism." Spanning the "long" modernist period (from about 1880 to 1950), this work aims not to define the era's dominant "beliefs," but to highlight and expose its salient controversies and changing cultural thought. Guided by the cultural lexicography developed by Raymond Williams in his groundbreaking work, Keywords (1976), the entries here focus on words with unstable meanings and conflicting definitions, tracking disparities to capture pivotal matters of discussion and debate. By selecting keywords that the modernists were utilizing themselves, and by drawing from a broad and eclectic range of writings, Modernism: Keywords illuminates a path to restoring the language of the modernist period to its life in the public sphere of its time.