The British avant-garde : the theory and politics of tradition
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The British avant-garde : the theory and politics of tradition
Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991
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Note
Bibliography: p. 157-169
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
This book offers a new theory of avant-gardism based on recent developments in the philosophy of intellectual history. The first section examines - on both theoretical and methodological grounds - current theories of avant-gardism, focusing on the work of Renato Poggioli and Peter Burger. In their place, an alternative theory is outlined which attempts to establish the intellectual conditions which make avant-garde activities possible, based on the claim that avant-garde politics are culturally and historically specific. This theory is used to establish the conditions for avant-garde activity in late 19th-century Britain: particularly, the intellectual changes which took place in political economy, historiography and sociology - changes which, by problematizing concepts of history and society, both made British avant-garde activity possible and determined the forms it took. The second section of the book examines the subversive politics, and hence, avant-gardism, in the work of Walter Pater, William Morris and Oscar Wilde, In this section, the focus is placed on the connections between literary and artistic practices and intellectual culture.
Table of Contents
- Part 1 Theory: preliminaries
- some problems with defining avant-gardism
- the conditions for avant-garde activity in 19th-century Britain. Part 2 Politics: the politics of obscurity - theorizing tradition
- Walter Pater - the rehabilitation of tradition
- William Morris - tradition and revolution
- Oscar Wilde - "traditional iconoclast".
by "Nielsen BookData"
