Rethinking Literary History: Idealism, Realism and Modernism from 1870 to 1914

Building on the argument in Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism, this talk will suggest that we will solve a number of nagging problems in literary history

Building on the argument in Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism, this talk will suggest that we will solve a number of nagging problems in literary history if we think of the period from 1870 to 1914 in European literature as a period of crisis, that is to say, as a period in which the old paradigm ( idealism) is slowly giving way to the new (modernism). I will also suggest that we should distinguish between early modernism, high modernism and late modernism, and show that realism is not modernism's other.
Toril Moi is Professor of Literature and Romance Studies at Duke University. She is particularly interested in questions arising in areas where literature and philosophy overlap. Her central research and teaching interest has always been feminist theory and women’s writing, but she also has extensive research interests in literary theory and aesthetics broadly defined, and in 19th and 20th century European literature. In addition to feminist theory, she is particularly interested in psychoanalytic theory, French phenomenology (Sartre, Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty), and ordinary language philosophy (Wittgenstein, Austin, Cavell). Her new book Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism:Art, Theater and Philosophy was published by OUP in September 2006.

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