ABSTRACT Title of Document: BRITISH MODERNIST ... - DRUM

(spatial) high art (vertical). In sympathy with this expansion, Friedman proposes a
“planetary modernism” that facilitates our expanding notions of modernity, yet is still
bound enough to be useful (Friedman, “Planetarity” 473). Friedman goes on to define
modernity according to a “dynamics of change” (478). Modernism, in turn, is for
Friedman “the expressive dimension of modernity” (Friedman, “Periodizing
Modernism” 432). This definition, Friedman argues, allows for “multiple
modernisms” while avoiding a “Eurocentric diffusionist ideology” and also avoiding
a too-diffuse definition of modernism (“Periodizing Modernism” 427, 429). Friedman
asserts that grounding a definition of modernism in this definition of modernity lends
it enough specificity to be useful, yet I remain skeptical that modernism defined as
“the expressive element of a historical dynamics of change” really does have much
utility for applied work. This is particularly true for studies such as this one that are
interested in the formal and stylistic properties of modernism. I am sympathetic to
Friedman’s project of expanding the field of modernist studies without viewing earlytwentieth-century
Europe (and the United States) as the ultimate source of all
modernisms. However, I am not convinced that Friedman’s definition is adequately
specific, even for her purposes. In any case, when studying any particular modernism,
definitions such as Jameson’s and McHale’s help us to define the particular features
of that modernism in regard to the particular research interests of the study.
Like Friedman and other contributors to new modernist studies, Jameson is
arguably more interested in defining modernity than in defining modernism.
However, Jameson rejects the notion that there are multiple modernities. For
Jameson, to assert that different nations, cultures, or times have their own modernities
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