Europa! Europa?

The Avant-Garde, Modernism and the Fate of a Continent

Sascha Bru, Jan Baetens, Benedikt Hjartarson, Peter Nicholls, Tania Ørum, Hubert Berg, Sascha Bru, Jan Baetens, Benedikt Hjartarson, Peter Nicholls, Tania Ørum, Hubert Berg

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9783110217711
• eBook ISBN: 9783110217728
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

The first volume of the new series "European Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies" focuses on the relation between the avant-garde, modernism and Europe. It combines interdisciplinary and intermedial research on experimental aesthetics and poetics. The essays, written by experts from more than fifteen countries, seek to bring out the complexity of the European avant-garde and modernism by relating it to Europe's intricate history, multiculturalism and multilingualism. They aim to inquire into the divergent cultural views on Europe taking shape in avant-garde and modernist practices and to chart a composite image of the "other Europe(s)" that have emerged from the (contemporary) avant-garde and experimental modernism. How did the avant-garde and modernism in (and outside) Europe give shape to local, national and pan-European forms of identity and community? To what extent does the transnational exchange and cross-fertilisation of aesthetic tendencies illustrate the well-rehearsed claim that the avant-gardes form a typically European phenomenon? Dealing with canonised as well as lesser known exponents of modernism and the avant-garde throughout Europe, this book will appeal to all those interested in European cultural, literary and art history.

Table of contents

• Frontmatter
• Contents
• Borderless Europe, Decentring Avant-Garde, Mosaic Modernism
• “What’s the Difference?” Revisiting the Concepts of Modernism and the Avant-Garde
• The Slovenian Interwar Literary Avant-Garde and Its Canonization
• Toward a Horizontal History of the European Avant-Garde
• The 20th Century: Century of the Arrière-Gardes?
• “The Serpent Eats Its Tail”: Avant-Garde and Arrière-garde in Paris, 1943-1953
• How We Look and Read: The European Avant-Garde’s Imprint on 20th-Century Theory
• Phönix Europa? Krieg und Kultur in Rudolf Pannwitz’ und Hugo von Hofmannsthals europäischer Idee
• Europa minor. Yvan and Claire Goll’s Europe
• La revue Zenit: une avant-garde entre particularisme identitaire et internationalisme
• Europa: une manifestation des avant-gardes européennes
• L’avant-garde bulgare de l’entre-deux-guerres comme exemple de l’«autre Europe»
• History or Europe: Images of Europe and Defense of Aesthetic Innovation in Post-1918 Poland
• Ästhetische Moderne und totalitäres Anti-Europa: der spanische Avantgardist Ernesto Giménez Caballero
• Ezra Pound’s Fascist “Europa”: Toward the Pisan Cantos
• Writing the Foundations of a Better World: The Role of Anglo-German Literary Exchange in the Reconstruction of Germany and the Construction of Europe, 1945-1949
• Avant-Garde or Civil Service? Yves Klein, Werner Ruhnau and “The European Situation”
• Discours internationaliste et conscience identitaire des échanges culturels : l’exemple belgo-allemand (Der Sturm, Résurrection)
• Historizing Modern Art: The “Difficult” Names
• The Insignia of Modernity and “le mouvement Apollinaire”
• Okkultismus, Esoterik, Mystik und die Ikonographie des Unsichtbaren in der frühen mitteleuropäischen Avantgarde. Das Beispiel der Posener Gruppe Bunt und des Bauhausprofessors Lothar Schreyer
• Apokalypse als Narrenspiel: Kurt Schwitters und die Mystik
• Messianic Endgames in German-Jewish Expressionist Literature
• “Here I am at home – here I am in a foreign land”. Multilingualism, Modernism and (De)territorialization in the Works of the Finland-Swedish Writer Elmer Diktonius
• Configurations « autographiques » dans Mémoires d’une liseuse de draps de Belen/Nelly Kaplan, ou comment déclencher le fou rire
• Artificial Africa in the European Avant-Garde: Marinetti and Tzara
• Seeing African Sculpture: Carl Einstein’s “ethnographie du blanc”
• Surrealism for the Ear: Paul Deharme’s Radio-Plays
• Amauta, l’Europe et les avant-gardes
• Carpentier’s Marvellous Real: Modernity and its Discontents in the Tropics
• Europa, Amerika in transition (1927-1938): Literatursprachliche Interkulturalität und Transgressionen des Avantgardesubjekts
• Travels of an Avant-Gardist, West-East-West: On Kawara
• The Colour of Modernism: Colour-Form Experiments in Europe and Australia
• Backmatter