Defining Modernism

Defining Modernism investigates the intellectual connections among three leading nineteenth-century European modernists Baudelaire, Nietzsche, and Richard Wagner. Through a close reading of Baudelaire's and Nietzsche's essays on art and culture, Wagner's role in the two writers' attempts to define the radically new concept of «modernism» is elucidated. Gogröf-Voorhees explores the affinity between the two writers, which emerges from a juxtaposition of their formulations of the idea of a fractured, contradictory modernity that at once embraces, scatters, and reevaluates an entire constellation of ideas, including romanticism, pessimism, decadence, and nihilism.

Autorentext

The Author: Andrea Gogröf-Voorhees is Assistant Professor of Liberal Studies at Western Washington University. She holds a doctorate in comparative literature from the University of Washington. Her main areas of interest are nineteenth-century French and German literature, literary theory, and philosophy.

Zusammenfassung
"Nietzsche's relationship to Baudelaire and French late Romanticism has become a prominent theme in recent Nietzsche research. Whereas previous studies deal with this relationship mostly in the form of influence studies, focusing on Nietzsche's reading of Baudelaire, Andrea Gogröf-Voorhees investigates the themes of literary modernity and decadence in their relation to aesthetic theory, and highlights features of Richard Wagner's critical and musical work that are at the core of Baudelaire's and Nietzsche's theoretical writings. Through close parallel readings of the relevant texts by Baudelaire and Nietzsche, she discerns decisive traits of a literary modernity that is still part of our own." (Ernst Behler, University of Washington)