Matei Calinescu Livres

Five Faces of Modernity is a series of semantic and cultural biographies of words that have taken on special significance in the last century and a half or so: modernity, avant-garde, decadence, kitsch, and postmodernism. The concept of modernity—the notion that we, the living, are different and somehow superior to our predecessors and that our civilization is likely to be succeeded by one even superior to ours—is a relatively recent Western invention and one whose time may already have passed, if we believe its postmodern challengers. Calinescu documents the rise of cultural modernity and, in tracing the shifting senses of the five terms under scrutiny, illustrates the intricate value judgments, conflicting orientations, and intellectual paradoxes to which it has given rise.Five Faces of Modernity attempts to do for the foundations of the modernist critical lexicon what earlier terminological studies have done for such complex categories as classicism, baroque, romanticism, realism, or symbolism and thereby fill a gap in literary scholarship. On another, more ambitious level, Calinescu deals at length with the larger issues, dilemmas, ideological tensions, and perplexities brought about by the assertion of modernity.

"Ugly, unkempt, a haunter of low dives who begs for a living and lives on the street, Zacharias Lichter exists for all that in a state of unlikely rapture. After being engulfed by a divine flame as a teenager, Zacharias has devoted his days to doing nothing at all--apart, that is, from composing the odd poem he immediately throws away and consorting with a handful of stray friends: Poldy, for example, the catatonic alcoholic whom Zacharias considers a brilliant philosopher, or another more vigorous barfly whose prolific output of pornographic verses has won him the nickname of the Poet. Zacharias is a kind of holy fool, but one whose foolery calls in question both social convention and conventional wisdom. He is as much skeptic as ecstatic, affirming above all the truth of perplexity. This of course is what makes him a permanent outrage to the powers that be, be they reactionary or revolutionary, and to all other self-appointed champions of morality who are blind to their own absurdity. The only thing that scares Zacharias is that all-purpose servant of conformity, the psychiatrist"--Amazon.com

The great diversity of contexts in which the term Postmodernism is currently encountered reflects the remarkable success of a coinage that has been in circulation for only about forty years. It has been used by philosophers, sociologists, art critics and literary historians to become, finally, a household word in the language of advertising and politics. Before letting it fade to a derelict cliche, an attempt is made in this volume of essays to use its potential as a cultural concept for the analysis and understanding of contemporary literature and thought.

Esta ambiciosa y original obra ofrece un análisis de las ideas estéticas e intelectuales que han dirigido la producción literaria durante los últimos ciento cincuenta años. El autor discute con gran acierto y sutileza las complejas relaciones entre conceptos que son comúnmente utilizados pero raras veces definidos con precisión: modernidad, vanguardia, decadencia, kitsch, postmodernidad... Mediante su análisis, plantea y estudia la " fuerza " vital que subyace al cambio de estos mencionados períodos que han recorrido Europa desde la introducción de la palabra " moderno " en el latín medieval hasta el postmodernismo actual. Esta " fuerza " o subjetividad-individualidad-irracionalidad, como fuerza creadora o destructora, se resiste a ser encorsetada con una estética convencional o académica que limite la irresistible lucha del hombre por la creatividad en toda su extensión. De este modo, Cinco caras de la modernidad constituye una importante contribución a los estudios y la crítica contemporáneos.