Modernism: Keywords

摘要

It is often said that if you can define the concepts and understand the keywords of an era, you are well on the way towards understanding the culture itself. You can do this, too, by examining its values and beliefs, yet, the argument goes, these are revealed through the central terminology used by artists and writers and critics at the time and later. Persuasive if, at the same time, the choice and interpretation of these words effectively opens up the wider and deeper cross-currents and preoccupations and perceptions of that time, and successfully moves on from being a mere vocabulary exercise. A further test should be the extent to which the words - and their interpretation and their demonstration of usage, contemporary and since - convincingly reflect their ever-changing and internally contradictory meanings.