Welcome! This page is designed as a starting point for those interested in the Modern Period
To Begin Exploring, Choose a Link Correlating to Your Interest . . .
Modernist philosophy
Modernist literature
Consumerism crisis; i'm there
The latest in modernist style
My cog journal
Britta's summer extravaganza
and . . .
The Immediate Past.
The modernist period is, in my opinion, one of the hardest to classify. In fact, I have numerous questions thrown at me by university students as to what the word refers to specifically. Why is it so hard to DELINEATE?
Perhaps is is partly due to the conceptual definition of modern, as this word has come to refer to the contemporary in colloquial speech. It is assumed that what is in the immediate present must be modern. But wait. The immediate past is characterized as modern as well. How can a period be distinguished if it's very DELINEATION refers to a continueum in time?
Simple.
This very problem is, paradoxically, what Modernism is, in essence. The continual interplay between the past and the present. Victorian with Modern, Modern with Post-Modern, and so forth. This specific period is characterized by a back-lash toward the fallable traditions of previous times, and a questioning of all that had come before. If there were a God, and people were inherently good, how could one even begin to explain war and colonization?
Modernists found themselves in a period of contradiction and transition. For once they would be forced to challenge their beliefs, and put into question what they had so long believed. What was produced was a era of remarkable literature, art, and music that explored the recesses of the human soul like no other, but always found it empty. This was the rebirth of Greco-Roman society, where philosophy took on a new significance, as thought became relative, and man became discerning.
