Modernist Aesthetics

Abstract

Modernist aesthetics developed through a series of arguments and practices that rejected both Romantic and realist notions of aesthetics, claiming instead the autonomy of the art object – whether a literary text, a piece of visual art, or a musical composition – with respect to social, political, and historical forces. Modernist writers used this notion of autonomy to produce boldly experimental texts that broke new ground for succeeding literary generations. Their works, in a variety of genres, are characterized by the use of literary strategies such as impressionism, psychological realism, dense and allusive mythological structures, depersonalization, expressive form, antimi‐meticism, and radically experimental styles. The modernists’ interest in innovation went well beyond the merely new object or technique, for they were primarily interested in new ways to create. Ezra Pound's dictum, “make it new,” could then be read in a way that emphasized the making rather than the made object. Flourishing in a volatile historical moment, modernist aesthetics have shaped the ideas of a number of critical thinkers and schools, and they continue to inform debates in contemporary literary and cultural theory.