At the turn of the twentieth century, poets and authors and artists faced an acute challenge: fewer and fewer people shared a common collection of symbols, myths, beliefs, and images in the West. Without common references, it’s hard for artists to communicate. Secularization, globalization, and industrialization shattered the old cosmos with its relatively stable and common set of symbols and ideas, leaving us with an exponentially growing index of private symbols and meanings. Consider, for example, how mass advertising and mass media changed the number and variety of images a person sees per
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