Culture, humanities & social science

The Mental Life of Modernism: Why Poetry, Painting, and Music Changed at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

Name: The Mental Life of Modernism: Why Poetry, Painting, and Music Changed at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
Author: Samuel Jay Keyser

By Samuel Jay Keyser, professor emeritus of linguistics

MIT Press · 2020

Keyser argues that the stylistic innovations of Western modernism reflect not a cultural shift but a cognitive one. Behind modernism is the same cognitive phenomenon that led to the scientific revolution of the 17th century: the brain coming up against its natural limitations.

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From Summer 2021 recommended reading from MIT (MIT News).

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