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Modernism and Modernist Literature
Difference between Realism and Modernism Whereas REALISM
Emphasized absolutism, and
single reality through the observation of nature
MODERNISM Argued for
cultural relativism,
people make their own meaning in the world.
Value Differences in the Modern WorldPre-Modern World Modern World (Early 20th
Century)Ordered ChaoticMeaningful FutileOptimistic PessimisticStable FluctuatingFaith Loss of faithMorality/Values Collapse of Morality/ValuesClear Sense of Identity Confused Sense of Identity
and Place in the World
So what’s modernism?
Literally outside of “civilized” English enclave in medieval Dublin
Metaphorically standing outside of conventional boundaries (law, behavior, class, gender, etc.)
Symbolically literary modernism—art going beyond boundaries of thought, style, propriety, genre, etc.
Alienation and exile Outsiders (Irish, immigrants,
expatriates, exiles): Joyce, Eliot, Lawrence, Conrad
Sense of alienation and outcast status from mainstream, middle-class, late Victorian British values—more doubt creeps in
Sources of anxiety Death of Victoria, ineffective
Edwardianism, outbreak of World War I Warfare: WMDs, killing from distance and
from air, shell shock, 8% of British population killed or wounded
Psychology: understanding and accepting that not all minds are ‘normal’ and that all identities are constructed—we are ALL counterfeiting.
Science: increasing evidence of evolution, new physics, “uncertainty principle,” “relativity”
Religion: old answers don’t seem to fit new and uncertain times. Nietzche: “God is dead.”
Literary modernism goes beyond the Pale…
“Make it new!”
“Make it different!”
“Make it difficult!”
“Make it new!” Resentment at close-mindedness and
complacency of late Victorian culture Increasing fragmentation and
insecurities lead to cynicism and distrust of “pat” solutions—doubts no longer resolved by faith
Nature replaced with the impersonalism of cities, the sterility of wastelands…
Sense that the “givens” are no longer good, that the moorings have been eroded away
Imagist poetry instead of Victorian expansiveness
“The Second Coming” instead of “Ulysses”
“Make it different!” Emergence of vers libre (free verse)
to replace prescribed metric forms Attack on and dismantling of
Victorian literary proprieties: language, sex, form, even typography
“Anxiety of influence”—effect of tradition on individual writers, trying to get out from under the perceived weight of the past
“Make it difficult!” Sense that “intellectual” literature had
to be different from that which pleased the masses
Bring in anthropology, mythology, psychology, science—challenge readers’ knowledge and expectations
“Stream of consciousness”—attempts to recreate the thinking of characters in works, to find a literary equivalent for how minds work
Forces Behind Modernism The sense that our culture has no
center, no values. Paradigm shift
from the closed, finite, measurable, cause-and-effect universe of the 19th century
to an open, relativistic, changing, strange universe;
Characteristics of Modernism in Literature
Literature Exhibits Perspectivism Meaning the individual’s perspective
Characteristics of Modernism in Literature
Inner psychological reality or “interiority” is representedoStream of consciousness—portraying the character’s inner monologue
Characteristic of Modernism in Literature
Perception of language changes: No longer seen as transparent,
allowing us to “see through” to reality;
But now considered the way an individual constructs reality;
Language is “thick” with multiple meanings and varied connotative forces.
Characteristic of Modernism in Literature
Emphasis on the Experimental Art is artifact rather than reality; Organized non-sequentially
▪ Experience portrayed as layered, allusive, discontinuous, using fragmentation and juxtaposition.
Ambiguous endings—open endings which are seen as more representative of reality.
Cubism
Cubism—1909-1911 Art in which multiple views are
presented simultaneously in flattened, geometric way.
Cubism
Dadaism
Dadaism –deliberately irrational a protest against the barbarism of the
War and oppressive intellectual rigidity;
Anti-art ▪ Strives to have no meaning▪ Interpretation dependent entirely on the viewer;
▪ Intentionally offends.
Dadaism
Duchamp
Surrealism
Surrealism Grew out of Dada and automatism. Reveals the unconscious mind in
dream images, the irrational, and the fantastic,
Impossible combinations of objects depicted in realistic detail.
Surrealism
Dali Magritte
Jackson Pollock
Futurism
Futurism—grew out of Cubism. Added implied motion to the shifting
planes and multiple observation points of the Cubists;
Celebrated natural as well as mechanical motion and speed.
Glorified danger, war, and the machine
Futurism
Giacomo BallaKandinsky
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