ABSTRACT
T he adjective "modern," says the Oxford English Dictionary,means"of or pertaining to the present and recent times," and it derives from the Latin modo, "just now." "Modern" was apparently first used by an English writer in 1585, and it has generated two nouns that are crucial to discussions of cultural history: "modernity" and "Modernism." All of us experience our lives as a succession of temporal moments: we have no choice but to live in "the present," and for each of us "now" is constantly changing. However, when we speak of "the modern age" or of "modernity" (earliest recorded appearance in 1627), our experience of temporality becomes self-conscious, a condition that can be grasped and discussed in the abstract rather than merely a sequence of moments. "Modernity" further implies a determinate historical period in which, presumably, entire societies have become acutely conscious of temporality and change, of an inescapable contrast between "then" and "now."
