20th century literature 1

Modernism
 20th c. literature
• Very complex and diverse
• The simplest (and very simplis<c division):
– Modernism
– Postmodernism
– The dividing line between the two being the WWII

– But there are many other related or parallel

smaller movements, genres, aGtudes to literature
 Modernism
• Many different ways of <ming – but approx. 1880s-1940s
• Not really a unified movement, rather a collec<on of more or less connected
avant-garde schools and movements with one common aim, as Ezra Pound put it:
“making it new”
– Symbolism, Impressionism, Expressionism, Vor<cism, Fauvism, etc. – oXen short-lived and
mutually contradictory
• Most prominent between the wars
• Annus mirabilis (the miraculous year of modernist literature) 1922 – publica<ons
of major modernist works
– James Joyce Ulysses
– T.S. Eliot The Waste Land
– Virginia Woolf Jacob‘s Room
– Katherine Mansfield The Garden Party and Other Stories
– Marcel Proust‘s A la recherche du temps perdu (the most prominent work of French
modernism) begins to be published in English
• Marked by major breaks with tradi<onal ways of viewing and interac<ng with the
world
• Keywords: Experimenta<on and individualism (hence so many different small
movements, both these mean something different to each group of writers)
• Central concern of modernism - the inner self and consciousness
 Please, note
• While modernism was the predominant cultural/ar<s<c/
literary movement of the 1st half of the 20th century, not all
the notable writers of that period were modernists
• Many writers s<ll wrote in the realist mode
examples:
– Thomas Hardy, one of the most prominent Victorian writers was
alive un<l 1928 (he didn’t write novels anymore though)
– John Galsworthy, another prominent Victorian, died in 1933,
and his masterpiece of realist wri<ng, the Forsythe Saga was
published in 1922 (remember, the Annus mirabilis of modernist
literature?)
– G.B. Shaw, another notable Victorian, this <me drama<st, didn’t
die un<l 1950 and co-wrote first screenplays of his famous play
Pygmalion that were to be adapted into film
 Modernism
• Reac<on against the Victorian culture and aesthe<cs a
reac<on against the troubling effects of modernity (modern
technology and developments in society)
• (seeming/professed) break with tradi<on – but it’s more of
a reinven<on of tradi<on than a complete dismissal of it
• An<-egalitarian movement – culture divided into “high”
and “low”
• Modernist literature influenced by three major areas/
theories/cultural shocks:
1. WWI
2. developments in psychology
3. new concept of <me
 Modernism and WWI
• The Great War: Major cultural shock that prompted
disbelief in tradi<onal values, protests against society
(Note, however, that most of the prominent
modernists of the 1920s published their early, very
promising experimental works before WWI – WWI was
a catalyst rather than the cause of modernism)
• ShiX of focus from the social to the individual
• From objec<ve to subjec<ve
• From op<mism to pessimism
• Pervading sense of aliena<on, feelings of loneliness,
loss and despair
 Modernism and Psychology
• Sigmund Freud’s theories – major influence on
modernist art and literature
– The theories of the conscious and the unconscious
– interest in complexity of human mind, use of
stream of consciousness, examina<on of inner-
self of a character, search for the real self – not
suppressed by social and cultural norms
 Modernism and Time
• It can be defined in larger terms as modernism and science
• Many scien<fic discoveries (physics, biology, chemistry) – discussed
widely in popular press influenced art (and not only its content, but
oXen its form) – e.g. Einstein’s theory of rela<vity
• 1884 Interna<onal Meridian Conference in Washington, D.C. –
divided the world into 20 <me zones – organized the measuring of
<me all over the world
• Important division of <me into public (official <me of train
schedules, clocks and business) and private (how human mind
perceives the passage of <me)
• While the “public” <me became organized, the ar<sts progressively
distrusted its simplifica<ons and unifica<ons and paid more
ajen<on to “private” <me – the percep<on our mind has of the
<me passed
In literature: as the past, present and future are intermingled in the mind
of man and cannot be separated, literature rejects chronological <me
 Modernist Novel
• Unreliable narrator – the narra<on cannot be taken at face
value – the reader is not supposed to trust what is being
said
• Strange workings of human consciousness – stream of
consciousness
• Introspec<ve
• ShiX from “objec<ve” representa<on of the world to the
subjec<ve
• From collec<ve/social (social change of the realist novel) to
individual
• From public to private
• Significant reduc<on of (public) <me covered – the usual
one year of Victorian novel reduced oXen to just one day
(Ulysses, Mrs. Dalloway)
 Modernism
• Although some works of literature in the second half of
the 20th c. could s<ll be considered modernist, the
movement as such mostly ended with WWII - reasons:
– It simply ran its course (no movement lasts forever, people
eventually get fed up and try something new), but also:
– most of modernism was inherently an<democra<c and
eli<st (belief in a small elite able to write/understand
really good literature/art) – to distance themselves from
the “low” culture, they made their art difficult on purpose
– Ideological associa<ons of some modernists with fascism/
Nazism (e.g. Ezra Pound’s belief in the necessity of “an
enlightened dictator” he believed Mussolini to be)
• Plenty of wonderful ar<cles on the 20th c.
literature at
hjps://www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/themes/
capturing-and-crea<ng-the-modern
I recommend especially:
hjps://www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/ar<cles/
broken-mirrors-the-first-world-war-and-modernist-
literature
hjps://www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/ar<cles/
ci<es-in-modernist-literature