Modernism

An overview of 20th century

literary trends

Lect. dr. Eliana Ionoaia

Precursors – Neoclassicism
◼ Neoclassicism dominates literary production
for centuries leading up to the Romantic
period in literature (roughly the 19th century,
though its underpinnings can be traced back
to as early as the beginning of the 17th
century in some parts of Europe, specifically
Germany).
◼ Neoclassicism has its roots in the Classical
period (the writings of Plato, Aristotle,
Socrates, Sophocles).
Neoclassicism (2)
◼ Literature during this reign is orderly, logical,
and fact-based, produced by authors who are
detached and unemotional in their writing.
◼ This style of literature is seen most
profoundly, in our near past, in the writings
of Realism (roughly the late 19th century),
through which writers depicted life as they
believed it really was, without grandiose or
sensational projections of what life might be.
Romanticism
◼ Moving on in this reign of logic and order is Romanticism, a
period during which many of Aristotle’s notions can be found.
- Stresses the freedom of the artist to be highly imaginative,
emotional, and/or spontaneous: no longer was the artist to
work to achieve mimesis of anything (such as a “Form” or
ideal).
- Asserts the worth of the individual person, the goodness of
humanity, and the glory of communication with nature.
- Sensibility and imagination are valued over reason and
intellect—passion and instinct are life’s law. The Romantic man
looks for freedom and tries to run away from all the imposed
ways that stop this freedom, just as instinct and passion lead
the human being to an exaggerated enthusiasm or to a deep
pessimism.
- In the last case, the Romantic wants to run away and there are
two possibilities: the one of the travel or the one of suicide.
Romanticism (2)
- Stylistically, it exhibits exotic locations, such as the
sea, wilderness, or the distant past; it depicts larger-
than-life characters, usually unmistakably heroic or
evil, characters who are obviously imaginary and not
intended to be realistic and who are sometimes even
incarnate symbols or stereotypes; its plots are usually
larger-than-life fantasy and the prose action-based
rather than character or narration based; and, finally,
its tone typically is positive and uplifting, with clear
moral ends, presenting little or no despair,
depression, or negativity.
- One of its greatest effects is the mythologizing of the
past.
 Definition

Modernism is a literary and cultural international movement which

flourished in the first decades of the 20th century. Modernism is
not a term to which a single meaning can be ascribed. It may
be applied both to the content and to the form of a work, or to
either in isolation. It reflects a sense of cultural crisis which
was both exciting and disquieting, in that it opened up a whole
new vista of human possibilities at the same time as putting
into question any previously accepted means of grounding and
evaluating new ideas. Modernism is marked by experimentation,
particularly manipulation of form, and by the realization that
knowledge is not absolute.
Modernism (roughly 1910 – mid 1940s) is an aesthetic movement
coupled with an historical time period, recording a radical break
with and from the past. It is multi-national and multi-disciplinary
(i.e.: present in culture, philosophy, science, literature, art). At its
root, this movement is a reaction to world affairs; such a reaction
bleeds into all that is created/produced during the era. Specific to
the literary movement is a major and self-conscious break with the
American and European literary tradition.
 A few dates
◼ 1909 ◼ 1912-17
◼ First “Manifesto” of
Italian Futurism ◼ Imagism

◼ 1910 ◼ Tradition and

◼ Death of Edward VII individual Talent by
◼ Post-impressionist
TS Eliot
exhibition in London
◼ 1913 ◼ 1922
◼ Russian Cubo-futurism ◼ Ts. Eliot’s The Waste
◼ English Verticism Land
1916-20
◼
◼ J. Joyce’s Ulysses
◼ Dada
◼ Death of [Link]
Modernism as a movement
Modernism as a movement can be recognized not only
in literature but also in
◼ The sciences

◼ Philosophy

◼ Psychology

◼ Anthropology

◼ Painting

◼ Music

◼ Sculpture

◼ Architecture
What does Modernism look like?
- anti-Romantic (meaning is no longer in the act of art
but in the art itself)
- meaning is subjective and no longer needs to be
present—we don’t look to art to see ourselves
- deliberate break from the past (in style, form,
content, as well as historical location)
- alienation from society, loneliness
- procrastination, inability to act
- agonized recollection of the past, causing man to
create own myths in his mind to fall back on
- fear of death coupled with a constant
awareness of death
- inability to express or to feel “real” love
- ironic: attenuated emotion yet a sense of
excitement about the future (that,
incidentally never amounts to anything—a
tragic struggle against disappointment)
- world as a wasteland
- inability to see self reflected in the
surrounding world, in others
 General Features
Modernism was built on a sense of lost community and
civilization and embodied a series of contradictions and
paradoxes, embraced multiple features of modern
sensibility
◼ Revolution and conservatism
◼ Loss of a sense of tradition
◼ lamented in an extreme form of reactionary conservatism
◼ celebrated as a means of liberation from the past
◼ Increasing dominance of technology
◼ condemned vehemently
◼ embraced as the flagship of progress
 The writer in the Modern period will
reflect these ideas through his works. He
will also:
- Work to locate meaning from the viewpoint of
the individual; use of narrators located within
the action of the fiction, experiencing the events
from a personal, particular (as opposed to an
omniscient and/or “objective”) perspective; use
of many voices, contrasts and contestations of
perspective so that the reader sees the story
from many different “perspectives”; make
disappear the omniscient narrator, especially as
‘spokesperson’ for the author
- Move time into the interior: time becomes psychological time
(time as “innerly” experienced) or symbolic time rather than a
historic reality. Time is used as well more complexly as a
structuring device through a movement backwards or
forwards through time, the juxtaposing of events of different
times, and so forth. Incidentally, art always attempts to
“imitate” or re-present reality; what changes is our
understanding of what constitutes reality, and how that reality
can best be re-presented, presented to the mind and sense
most faithfully and fully.
- Represent various typical themes, including: question of the
reality of experience itself; the search for a ground of
meaning in a world without God; the critique of the traditional
values of the culture; the loss of meaning and hope in the
modern world and an exploration of how this loss may be
faced.
- Work to show the surface disorder of the world/society and
nevertheless imply there exists a certain underlying unity.
- Work to depict the myriad ways his characters can become
honorable and dignified in a world seemingly lacking both
honor and dignity.
What’s the point of all this
Modernist writing?
- Complete a search, or simply to
undertake a search and so be
“battered” and educated by it, for an
understanding of the self in the context
of the world/society
- Simple search for meaning
- Make meaning out of experience to
make living purposeful
◼ Modern characters are generally on some type of quest,
preparing to recompense themselves (and often recreate
themselves in a fashion that is understandable to them). They
undertake this quest so as to live all they can and find
meaning in a disordered and confused world. These
characters do not know or understand a world of rationality
and staunch morality that once reigned, but see in front of
them a world characterized by loose morality and a people
easily seduced by transitory pleasures, who exhibit little
ambition or motivation or regard for the consequences of
their actions.
Thus generalized, Modernism can
be said to:
- arise from a sharp and biting sense of loss on
ontological grounding
- be a response to a sense of social breakdown
- be a reaction to WWI
- see the world as fragmented, unrelated in its pieces
- perceive the connective threads of existence (that
which unites mankind) previously present as missing
(i.e.: morality, religion, common goals and
experiences)
- be ironic, but not unfeeling
- question the purpose of art because it perceives the
world as falling apart
Consequences
Productive insecurity originated
◼ Aesthetics of experimentation
◼ Fragmentation
◼ Ambiguity
◼ Nihilism
◼ Variety of theories
◼ Diversity of practices
Thematic features
◼ Intentional distortion of shapes
◼ Focus on form rather than meaning
◼ Breaking down of limitation of space and time
◼ Breakdown of social norms and cultural values
◼ Dislocation of meaning and sense from its normal context
◼ Valorisation of the despairing individual in the face of an
unmanageable future
◼ Disillusionment
◼ Rejection of history and the substitution of a mythical past
◼ Need to reflect the complexity of modern urban life
◼ Importance of the unconscious mind
◼ Interest in the primitive and non-western cultures
◼ Impossibility of an absolute interpretation of reality
◼ Overwhelming technological changes
Painting
◼ Fauvism – Matisse
◼ Supremacy of colour over form
◼ Interest in the primitive and the magical
◼ Cubism – Picasso, Braque
◼ Fragmentation of objects into abstract geometric forms
◼ Abstract painting – Kandinsky
◼ Attention to line, colour, shape as subjects of painting
◼ Vorticism – Wyndham Lewis
◼ Incorporating the idea of motion and change
Now, let’s take a close look at Les
Demoiselles d’Avignon by Picasso.
• Describe what makes these
figures so unconventional.

• What do you notice about the

setting? Do the fractured planes
make the setting difficult to
identify?

• How did this work break with

tradition?

• How might this work of art have

been controversial at the time it
Pablo Picasso. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. was painted?
Paris, June-July 1907
Marcel Duchamp
Nude Descending a Staircase
Rene Magritte
The Lovers 1928
Music
Stravinsky, Schoenberg
◼ Dissonance/distorted music effects

◼ Rejection of rules of harmony and

composition
◼ Serial system of composition
Formal features of poetry
◼ Open form
◼ Use of free verse
◼ Juxtaposition of ideas rather than consequential
exposition
◼ Intertextuality
◼ Use of allusions and multiple association of words
◼ Borrowings from other cultures and languages
◼ Unconventional use of metaphor
◼ Importance given to sound to convey “the music of
ideas”
 Free verse
Let us go then, you and I,
◼ Use of poetic line When the evening is spread out against the
◼ Flexibility of line length sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
◼ Massive use of Let us go, through certain half-deserted
alliteration and streets,
assonance The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
◼ No use of traditional And sawdust restaurants with oyster
metre shells:
◼ No regular rhyme Streets that follow like a tedious argument
scheme Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question . . .
◼ Use of visual images in Oh, do not ask, "What is it?“
distinct lines Let us go and make our visit.
T.S Eliot Prufrock
Modernist poets
◼ W.B. Yeats
◼ Ezra Pound
◼ T.S. Eliot
W.B. Yeats (1855-1939)
T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)
Modernist novelists
◼ J, Joyce
◼ V. Woolf
◼ D.H. Lawrence
◼ J. Conrad
◼ E.M. Forster
Formal features of narrative
◼ Experimental nature
◼ Lack of traditional chronological narrative (discontinuous
narrative)
◼ Break of narrative frames (fragmentation)
◼ Moving from one level of narrative to another
◼ A number of different narrators (multiple narrative points of
view)
◼ Self-reflexive about the act of writing and the nature of
literature (meta-narrative)
◼ Use of interior monologue technique
◼ Use of the stream of consciousness technique
◼ Focus on a character's consciousness and subconscious
Stream of consciousness
◼ Aims to provide a textual equivalent to the stream of
a fictional character’s consciousness
◼ Creates the impression that the reader is
eavesdropping on the flow of conscious experience in
the character’s mind
◼ Comes in a variety of stylistic forms
◼ Narrated stream of consciousness often composed of
different sentence types including psycho-narration
and free indirect style
◼ characterized by associative (and at times
dissociative) leaps in syntax and punctuation
Interior monologue
◼ A particular kind of stream of consciousness writing
◼ Also called quoted stream of consciousness, presents characters’
thought streams exclusively in the form of silent inner speech,
as a stream of verbalised thoughts
◼ Represents characters speaking silently to themselves and
quotes their inner speech, often without speech marks
◼ Is presented in the first person and in the present tense and
employs deictic words
◼ also attempts to mimic the unstructured free flow of thought
◼ can be found in the context of third-person narration and
dialogue
V. Woolf (1882-1941)
J. Joyce (1882-1941)
D.H Lawrence (1995-1930)
G. Orwell (1903-1950)
Industrialisation
Modernists rebelled against tradition
New Forms and Materials
19th century Romanticism
Realism
Moral Crisis
Total War
Things fall apart
Fragments shored against the ruins
Modernism – response to
modernity
References
◼ Bradbury, Malcolm, and McFarlane, James, eds. Modernism: A
Guide to European Literature, 1890-1930. London: Penguin
◼ Brooker, Peter, ed. Modernism/Postmodernism. London:
Longman, 1992
◼ Hassan, Ihab and Hassan, Sally, eds. Innovation/Renovation: New
Perspectives on the Humanities. Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1983
◼ Huyssen, Andreas. After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture,
Postmodernism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986
◼ Lodge, David, ed. Modernism, Antimodernism, and
Postmodernism. Birmingham: University of Birmingham Press, 1977
◼ Wilde, Alan. Horizon of Assent: Modernism, Postmodernism and the
Ironic Imagination. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1981.