Aphoristic Modernity: 1880 to the Present (Literary Modernism, Book 6)

For the first time in scholarship, this essay collectioninterprets modernity through the literary micro-genres of theaphorism, the epigram, the maxim, and the fragment. SituatingFriedrich Nietzsche and Oscar Wilde as forerunners of modernaphoristic culture, the collection analyses the relationshipbetween aphoristic consciousness and literary modernism in theexpanded purview of the long twentieth century, through the work ofa wide range of authors, including Samuel Beckett, Max Beerbohm,Jorge Luis Borges, Katherine Mansfield, and Stevie Smith. From theromantic fragment to the tweet, Aphoristic Modernity offers acompelling exploration of the short form's pervasive presence bothas a standalone artefact and as part of a larger textual andcultural matrix.