Early Modernism Literature, Music, and Painting in Europe, 1900-1916

From the advent of Fauvism to the development of Dada, the early part of this century saw a series of avant-garde movements in European literature, music, and painting, which fundamentally re-examined the languages of the arts. Early Modernism is a uniquely integrated introduction to the great movements of this period. In contrast to the overly literary bias of previous studies of Modernism it highlights the interaction between the arts and the interlinking nature of the developments made by Matisse, Picasso, Schoenberg,Eliot, Apollinaire, Marinetti, Benn and many others. The resulting changes and radical new techniques such as atonality, cubism, and collage, are set in the context both of the art that preceded them and a profound shift in ideas. Theories of the unconscious, the association of ideas, primitivism,and reliance upon upon an expressionist intuition led to a reshaped conception of personal identity, and the book examines the representation of the Modernist self in the work of figures including Joyce, Mann, Conrad, and Stravinsky. Lavishly illustrated, Early Modernism provides an elegant and incisive guide to this momentous period in the history of European art.

Christopher Butler is Tutor in English Literature and Curator of Pictures at Christ Church, Oxford.