The Poetics of the Avant-garde in Literature, Arts, and Philosophy presents a range of chapters written by a highly international group of scholars from disciplines such as literary studies, arts, theatre, and philosophy to analyze the ambitions of avant-garde artists. Together, these essays highlight the interdisciplinary scope of the historic avant-garde and the interconnectedness of its artists. Contributors analyze topics such as abstraction and estrangement across the arts, the imaginary dialogue between Lev Yakubinsky and Mikhail Bakhtin, the problem of the “masculine ethos” in the Russian avant-garde, the transformation of barefoot dancing, Kazimir Malevich’s avant-garde poetic experimentations, the ecological imagination of the Polish avant-garde, science-fiction in the Russian avant-garde cinema, and the almost forgotten history of the avant-garde children’s literature in Germany. The chapters in this collection open a new critical discourse about the avant-garde movement in Europe and reshape contemporary understandings of it.

Although Mikhail Bakhtin's study of the novel does not focus in any systematic way on the role that translation plays in the processes of novelistic creation and dissemination, when he does broach the topic he grants translation'a disproportionately significant role in the emergence and constitution of literature. The contributors to this volume, from the US, Hong Kong, Finland, Japan, Spain, Italy, Bangladesh, and Belgium, bring their own polyphonic experiences with the theory and practice of translation to the discussion of Bakhtin's ideas about this topic, in order to illuminate their relevance to translation studies today. Broadly stated, the essays examine the art of translation as an exercise in a cultural re-accentuation (a transferal of the original text and its characters to the novel soil of a different language and culture, which inevitably leads to the proliferation of multivalent meanings), and to explore the various re-accentuation devices employed over the span of the last 100 years in translating modern texts from one language to another. Through its contributors, The Art of Translation in Light of Bakhtin's Re-accentuation brings together different cultural contexts and disciplines (such as literature, literary theory, the visual arts, pedagogy, translation studies, and philosophy) to demonstrate the continued international relevance of Bakhtin's ideas to the study of creative practices, broadly understood.

As the last generation of underground artists in the Soviet Union and the first on the post-Soviet scene, Moscow conceptualists provide a unique point of view on the breakup of the USSR, the changing role of unofficial art in a repressive state, and the beginning of a new world order in both art and politics. Offering a counter-narrative to the tradition of Socialist Realism that dominates Soviet art history, this book provides insight into the production and activism of the experimental artists that worked in Moscow during this watershed moment in Russian history. Based on extensive original research and in-depth interviews with the original artists, Nicholas demonstrates how the work of these radical, unconventional artists challenged the Soviet authorities, official doctrine, and even other colleagues in the nonconformist art world. They rebelled against political and artistic restraints alike, turning everyday texts and engaged performances into powerful statements of creative independence and unrestrained imagination. Unlike many of their fellow dissenters, these artists rejected elitist notions about art for art's sake in favor of a more open, democratic, and on-going dialogue about everyday concerns. Their embrace of humor, their focus on the real meaning of words, and their insistence on the importance of broad participation in the creation of art make these artists important models for the challenges of our own time. A crucial link between the revolutionary avant-garde and contemporary protest art, Moscow conceptualism offers lessons for activists under pressure from authoritarian regimes around the world. By highlighting the importance of laughter, imaginative outreach, and direct engagement with everyday citizens, this book presents fascinating evidence of the importance of individual protest and demonstrates that socially-engaged art can be a powerful weapon for change in building a better world.

This collection offers new perspectives on the interdisciplinary scope of the historic avant-garde and highlights the interconnectedness of its artists from a variety of national and disciplinary perspectives.

It has often been argued that the arrival of the early-20th-century avant-gardes and modernisms coincided with an in-depth exploration of the materiality of art and writing. The European historical avant-gardes and modernisms excelled in their attempts to establish the specificity of media and art forms as well as in experimenting with the hybridity of the materials of their multiple disciplines. This third volume of the series European Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies sheds light on the full range and import of this aspect in avant-garde and modernist aesthetics across all art forms and throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. The book’s contributions, written by experts from some 20 countries, seek to answer the following questions: What sort of objects and material, works and media help us to properly grasp the avant-garde and modernist “aesthetics of matter”? How were affects, emotions and sensory and bodily experiences transferred and transformed in the experiment with matter? How were “immaterial” things such as concepts of time changed in this aesthetic moment? What “material meanings” were disseminated in the cultural transfer and translation of objects? How did subsequent avant-gardes deal with the “aesthetics of matter” in their response to historical predecessors?

This book examines the heritage of Victor Shklovsky in a variety of disciplines. To achieve this end, Slav N. Gratchev and Howard Mancing draw upon colleagues from eight different countries across the world—the United States, Canada, Russia, England, Scotland, the Netherlands, Norway, and China—in order to bring the widest variety of points of view on the subject. Viktor Shklovsky’s Heritage in Literature, Arts, and Philosophy is more than just another collection of essays of literary criticism: the editors invited scholars from different disciplines—literature, cinematography, and philosophy—who have dealt with Shklovsky’s heritage and saw its practical application in their fields. Therefore, all of these essays are written in a variety of humanist academic and scholarly styles, all engaging and dynamic.

Juan Luis Martínez’s Philosophical Poetics is the first English-language monograph on this Chilean visual artist and poet (1942–1993). It has two principal aims: first, to introduce Martínez’s poetry and radical aesthetics to English-speaking audiences, and second, to carefully analyze key aspects of his literary production. The readings undertaken in this book explore Martínez’s intricate textual formalisms, the self-effacement that characterizes his poetry, and the tension between his local (Latin American, Chilean) aspect and the cosmopolitanism or transnationalism that insists on the global relevance of his work. Through his artistic engagement with a number of esoteric concepts—for example, his recuperation of pataphysical “logic” and Oulipian combinatorics, mathematical reasoning, Eastern thought, and the historical avant-gardes—Martínez creates a rigorous quasi-system of citation and erasure that is a philosophical poetics as well as a poetic philosophy. Juan Luis Martínez’s Philosophical Poetics thus addresses all major publications by this groundbreaking Chilean artist and poet in order to read his difficult, experimental texts by focusing on the tension he creates between philosophical, political, literary, and scientific discourses.