Editor's Introduction: Alternative Modernity

All the essays in this volume can be loosely grouped under the title of "Alternative Modernity," a phrase employed in the title of one of them. Some of the contributions deal with methodologies or conceptual frameworks that place sets of ideas into new contexts. Others look at the changing nature of ideas or texts assumed to have a static meaning within the modernist lexicon. Finally, a number of the essays focus on formal elements previously ignored or sidelined by critics in their approach to certain texts. Seemingly insignificant imagery and motifs are explored here and shown to have far greater importance in shaping meaning than conventionally believed. In a cluster of essays, sound is a central focus, a shift away from a more common linguistic or visual one.

It is our hope that these alternative approaches, both formal and conceptual, will spark new avenues of understanding and imagining in our readers.