What is the significance of memory for and in literary modernism?
According to Poplawski (2003, p vii), modernism continues to be widely acknowledged as probably the most important and influential artistic-cultural phenomenon of the twentieth century. Poplawski further notes, that modernism is characterised by an avant-garde experimentalism and its concern for radical innovation in artistic form, style, content and method. Intellectual and artistic movements within the 19th century, such as impressionism, imagism, symbolism, futurism, and expressionism, paved the way for the emergence of literary modernism. Indeed, this influential paradigm demonstrated a profound concern with themes of alienation, fragmentation, and the loss of shared values and meanings Poplawski (2003, ix).
Essay on the socially devastating and visually gorgeous.
Socially devastating, visually gorgeous, is a neat encapsulation of the main dilemma for a twenty-first century architect. This architect is assailed by two contesting pressures. On one side, he is aware that the most prominent and fashionable style of contemporary architecture promotes glamorous and glitzy designs that bewilder the eye and imagination. On the other side, he observes that such architecture betrays a distressing lack of social and cultural consciousness, and indeed exalts style over substance. The British development industry favours such contemporary architecture and with its enormous power and influence it exerts much pressure upon architects to conform to this style no matter what the social implications. Successive governments too have been complicit in this shift away from socially-minded development towards that which is outwardly stunning but inwardly barren. This dissertation then is an examination of the various pressures and influences that circle about and press upon the modern architect. It observes and analyses too the changing role of architects from ‘form-providers’ to their present status as ‘problem-solvers’.
