Zenithism

This volume brings together for the first time essays on both Claire and Yvan Goll. The Golls made distinctive contributions to the literary cultures of France and Germany in the first half of the twentieth century. Their writings shed much light upon their respective positions within the exile communities created by the First and Second World Wars, and in the inter-war avant-gardes of Paris and Berlin, whose cosmopolitanism and eclecticism they came to embody. The Golls' literary output was shaped by, and in turn helped to enrich, the experimental trends that often challenged or transcended conventional notions according to which genre and choice of literary language are stable phenomena. The essays in this volume focus on texts by Yvan and Claire Goll in French and German, and in various literary forms: these are examined in relation to contem-porary literary, artistic and musical developments, and place particular emphasis on collaborative and interdisciplinary works. The analyses explore a wide range of theoretical perspectives, including inter-textuality, Trivialliteratur, psychoanalysis, feminism, cultural marginality and négritude. This collection represents a distinctive and wide-ranging contribution to the study of Yvan and Claire Goll at a time of renewed critical interest in their lives and work.

This title recounts the history of para-cinema - the long tradition within the avant garde of adapting the tools, technologies, and techniques of conventionalfilm-making. Levi's study considers works by filmmakers, artists, and theorists from France, Italy, the Soviet Union, Germany, Hungary, and Yugoslavia.

Item consists of texts written 1910-1934, translated into English.

Since Greek antiquity, the ‘barbarian’ captivates the Western imaginary and operates as the antipode against which self-proclaimed civilized groups define themselves. Therefore, the study of the cultural history of barbarism is a simultaneous exploration of the shifting contours of European identity. This two-volume co-authored study explores the history of the concept ‘barbarism’ from the 18th century to the present and illuminates its foundational role in modern European and Western identity. It constitutes an original comparative, interdisciplinary exploration of the concept’s modern European and Western history, with emphasis on the role of literature in the concept’s shifting functions. Critically responding to the contemporary popularity of the term ‘barbarian' in political rhetoric and the media, and its violent, exclusionary workings, the study contributes to a historically grounded understanding of this figure’s past and contemporary uses. It combines overviews with detailed analyses of representative works of literature, art, film, philosophy, political and cultural theory, in which “barbarism” figures prominently.

This book explores how Modernist movements all across the Mediterranean basin differed from those of other regions. The chapters show how the political and economic turmoil of a period marked by world war, revolution, decolonization, nationalism, and the rapid advance of new technologies compelled artists, writers, and other intellectuals to create a new hybrid Mediterranean Modernist aesthetic which sought to balance the tensions between local and foreign, tradition and innovation, and colonial and postcolonial.

Biographical note: Sascha Bru, Genth University, Belgium; Peter Nicholls, University of Sussex, UK.

The works of the classic European avant-gardes (cubism, futurism, expressionism, Dadaism, constructivism and many other -isms) today still strike many students of modernism as strange or incomprehensible. Is this art? Do we have to take a sound poem seriously? How, at all. are we to read and interpret avant-garde works? And what on earth is the fourth dimension in physics that fascinated so many avant-gardists? This engaging introduction is designed to answer all these questions and more.