Modernism in the United States and Canada

Abstract

As a multivalent term that either denotes a contemporary phenomenon regardless of time and place or, in a more specific sense, relates to a period of paradigmatic shifts in Western cultures (Gove 1986, 1452), “modern” and its derivatives have spurred the scholarly debates for more than a century now. Definitions and periodizations differ widely from discipline to discipline and vary even within individual fields. In literary and cultural studies there is a broad consensus that around 1900 major changes made themselves felt in Europe and North America—among them technological advances and the development of cosmopolitan centers—and that these, in turn, made artists look for new topics and innovative modes of representation. Nevertheless, continental European scholars on the one hand and British and North American scholars on the other hand tend to prefer different terms and partitions of cultural history. Whereas the former speak of “the modern,” an entity that includes symbolism, aestheticism, and naturalism, or of “the avantgarde,” often referring to Futurism, Dadaism, or expressionism, British and North American scholars usually employ the designation “modernism,” having in mind a period that starts slightly later than “the modern” and encompasses influential movements like imagism or Vorticism. In short, “One of the major obstacles encountered by critics of Modernism, particularly by comparatists, is the semantic confusion generated by the term itself” (Chefdor 1986, 1; see also Eysteinsson 1990, 6).