Quick Intro to Post-Modernism
The book you are reading (yes, you are reading, reading, reeeeaddingggg) is a very post-modern text. So what is a post-modern text? First, what is/was modernism? In the early 20th Century science had made some important advances (I can´t remember what they were, but that doesn´t matter. I mean, you can find out. ) So artists (meaning artists, writers,photographers, dancers, musicians) reacted to this by trying to prove how important art is to human existence. In other words, science is not sufficient in explaining ´the human condition´. Think of it like this: when you are unwell you might take some medicine to cure the illness. But watching your favourite film, episode of ´The Simpsons´, or reading a good book or magazine might also help your recovery. We need more than science. So, artists set out to prove that art is just as important as science. How did they do this? That´s the complicated bit. They made art very referenced (full of references to other art) to show that it has as much depth and requires as much knowledge as other areas of knowledge. It was also very perfected, very complete and tried to make form match function. This also meant that it was very élite (it could not be accessed by just anybody). Take, for example, the first few lines of this poem,T.S Elliot´s ´The Wasteland’ , the full version of which is over 400 lines long.