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