Only Connect: A passage from Modernism to Postmodernism

Felix Nicolau

Only Connect: A passage from Modernism to Postmodernism

Felix Nicolau

Technical University of Civil Engineering

Research output: Book/Report › Book › Research › peer-review

Abstract

In Cultural Communication: Approaches to Modernity and Postmodernity (2014) I studied the evolution of the canon as a result of the aesthetical and ideological transformations during the 20th century. The elaboration of the canon comports distinctions in terms of the relationship between modernism and postmodernism. Jennifer Ashton insisted on the transformations suffered by the regime of texts. The Eliot-type modernism adopted the autonomy of the text (or what postmodernism would call the “close text”) and the determination of its meanings, whereas the postmodern text will be “open” and indeterminate in terms of meaning (Ashton 2005: 1). Reader-response theory tries to reduce ambiguity, but ultimately this is an issue related to the cultural level of the readership. The acceptance of an increased openness for our messages implies a reduced intention of dominance in the act of communication. If we take serious account, though, of Jürgen Habermas’s description of modernism as a sequel of the Enlightenment project, it results that the canonizing process relies solely on rationality and equity.

Original language	English
Place of Publication	Bucharest
Publisher	Fractalia
Number of pages	256
ISBN (Print)	978-606-94005-5-5
Publication status	Published - 2016 Jul 23
Externally published	Yes

Bibliographical note

Felix Nicolau is Professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Communication, The Technical University of Civil Engineering, Bucharest, Romania and visiting lecturer at the Faculty of Humanities, Lund University, Sweden. He defended his PhD in Comparative Literature in 2003 and is the author of eight books of literary and communication theory: Morpheus: from Text to Images. Intersemiotic Translations (2016), Take the Floor. Professional Communication Theoretically Contextualized (2014), Cultural Communication: Approaches to Modernity and Postmodernity (2014), Comunicare şi creativitate. Interpretarea textului contemporan (Communication and Creativity. The Interpretation of Contemporary Text, 2014), Homo Imprudens (2006), Anticanonice (Anticanonicals, 2009), Codul lui Eminescu (Eminescu’s Code, 2010), and Estetica inumană: de la Postmodernism la Facebook (The Inhuman Aesthetics: from Postmodernism to Facebook, 2013), five volumes of poetry (Kamceatka – time IS honey, 2014) and two novels.He is member in the editorial boards of “The Muse – an International Journal of Poetry” and “Metaliteratura” magazines. His areas of interest are translation studies, the theory of communication, comparative literature, cultural studies, translation studies, British and American studies, and Romanian studies.

Subject classification (UKÄ)

Cultural Studies

Free keywords

poststructuralism
postmodernism
Modernism
canon (literature)
Counter-culture

Cite this

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Only Connect: A passage from Modernism to Postmodernism

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Subject classification (UKÄ)

Free keywords

Other files and links

Fingerprint

A venit timpul re-creaţiei, re-generãrii

Algoritmizarea ființelor

You Are not Alone: Culture and Civilization

Swedish Journal of Romanian Studies (Journal)

Cite this

Only Connect: A passage from Modernism to Postmodernism

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Subject classification (UKÄ)

Free keywords

Other files and links

Fingerprint

Research output

A venit timpul re-creaţiei, re-generãrii

Algoritmizarea ființelor

You Are not Alone: Culture and Civilization

Activities

Swedish Journal of Romanian Studies (Journal)

Cite this