Overview

Braiding together strands of literary, phenomenological and art historical reflection, Modernism and Phenomenology explores the ways in which modernist writers and artists return us to wonder before the world. Taking such wonder as the motive for phenomenology itself, and challenging extant views of modernism that uphold a mind-world opposition rooted in Cartesian thought, the book considers the work of modernists who, far from  presenting perfect, finished models for life and the self, embrace raw and semi-chaotic experience. Close readings of works by Paul Cézanne, Gertrude Stein, Franz Kafka, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Wallace Stevens, Paul Klee, and Virginia Woolf explore how modernist texts and artworks display a deep-rooted openness to the world that turns us into ""perpetual beginners."" Pushing back against ideas of modernism as fragmentation or groundlessness, Mildenberg argues that this openness is less a sign of powerlessness and deferred meaning than of the very provisionality of experience.

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9780230289369

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Reviews

The strengths of Ariane Mildenberg's study are undeniable. It is precise in its handling of phenomenological concepts while steering clear of technical complexities, and thus remaining perfectly accessible to the uninitiated. (Xavier Le Brun, Etudes britanniques contemporaines, Vol. 57, 2019) ''The exultant final chapter of Ariane Mildenberg's Modernism and Phenomenology is an upbeat and celebratory interrogation of the doubleness of experience and its expression. ... This core doubleness of interrogative openness to the strangeness of experience is explored as the heart of both modernism and phenomenology and the book does an excellent job of tracing this pulse in the work of Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty and showing how it beats in time with many of the central texts and paintings of modernism'' (Eoghan Walls, The Oxford Literary Review, Vol. 40 (2), 2018)

''The exultant final chapter of Ariane Mildenberg's Modernism and Phenomenology is an upbeat and celebratory interrogation of the doubleness of experience and its expression. ... This core doubleness of interrogative openness to the strangeness of experience is explored as the heart of both modernism and phenomenology and the book does an excellent job of tracing this pulse in the work of Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty and showing how it beats in time with many of the central texts and paintings of modernism'' (Eoghan Walls, The Oxford Literary Review, Vol. 40 (2), 2018)

In Modernism and Phenomenology philosophical, literary and art historical strands are verflochten into a unique and original tapestry that offers new ways of thinking about some of the crucial questions at the heart of modernist work. ... In gathering and rigorously analysing such a range of material Mildenberg has done a great service to modernist studies ... . Her rigorously researched and generous book represents an invaluable thread in the tapestry of modernist criticism, a strand that will hopefully be braided further by literary scholars. (Imola Nagy-Seres, Modernist Cultures, Vol. 15 (2), 2020) The strengths of Ariane Mildenberg's study are undeniable. It is precise in its handling of phenomenological concepts while steering clear of technical complexities, and thus remaining perfectly accessible to the uninitiated. (Xavier Le Brun, Etudes britanniques contemporaines, Vol. 57, 2019) ''The exultant final chapter of Ariane Mildenberg's Modernism and Phenomenology is an upbeat and celebratory interrogation of the doubleness of experience and its expression. ... This core doubleness of interrogative openness to the strangeness of experience is explored as the heart of both modernism and phenomenology and the book does an excellent job of tracing this pulse in the work of Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty and showing how it beats in time with many of the central texts and paintings of modernism'' (Eoghan Walls, The Oxford Literary Review, Vol. 40 (2), 2018)

Author Information

Ariane Mildenberg is Lecturer in Modernism at the University of Kent, UK. She is co-editor of Phenomenology, Modernism and Beyond (2010) and has published various journal articles and essays on the interaction of phenomenology with modernist literature.

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