Modernism on Air

The thesis is entitled “Modernism on Air” and is structured into four chapters, preceded by an introduction, which focuses on the notion of The Great Divide between Modernism and mass culture. The first chapter analyses the main theories which claim there is no connection between Modernism and mass culture. Specifically, it is taken into account Huyssen’s thought that affirms the existence of an ‘unbridgeable gap’ between the above-mentioned movements. Moreover, Walter Benjamin’s and Theodor Adorno’s theories, that form the basis of the dichotomy between Modernism and mass culture, have been object of investigation. In addition, the Modernist studies of the last decade, that claim Modernism was not an elitist movement, have been investigated. The second chapter of the present work describes the intersections between Modernism and mass culture by fashion magazines and radio stations. Virginia Woolf’s contributions to Vogue and the BBC have been analysed. The third part of the research pays attention to the effects of radio and sound on the written word. Starting from the notion of ocularcentrism, that considered the eye the main tool to know the world, and its subsequent crisis, several excerpts from Joyce’s and Woolf’s novels have been examined in detail in order to demonstrate that Modernists disempowered vision in favour of hearing. In this way perception, as a knowing mode of the world, is not provided exclusively by the eye but also by the ear. The last chapter is devoted to the intentional incorporation of radio into the work of art. Samuel Beckett’s and Dylan Thomas’ radio texts have been studied. Unlike in the past, a text is no more thought for the page and then adapted to radio but the latter becomes the matrix that gives form and substance to the text. In this way a new kind of artistic work is created in which its characters have a strong ‘radiophonic’ valence because of the way they are brought into existence and act. [edited by Author]