Modernism is a philosophical movement that, along with cultural trends and changes, arose from wide-scale and far-reaching transformations in Western society in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Among the factors that shaped Modernism were the development of modern industrial societies and the rapid growth of cities, followed then by the horror of World War I. Modernism also rejected the certainty of Enlightenment thinking, and many modernists rejected religious belief.[2][3]
Modernism, in general, includes the activities and creations of those who felt the traditional forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, philosophy, social organisation, activities of daily life, and even the sciences, were becoming ill-fitted to their tasks and outdated in the new economic, social, and political environment of an emerging fully industrialised world. The poet Ezra Pound's 1934 injunction to "Make it new!" was the touchstone of the movement's approach towards what it saw as the now obsolete culture of the past. Nevertheless, its innovations, like the stream-of-consciousness novel, atonal (or pantonal) and twelve-tone music, quantum physics, genetics, neuron networks, set theory, analytic philosophy, the moving-picture show, divisionist painting and abstract art, all had precursors in the 19th century.
Some commentators define Modernism as a mode of thinking—one or more philosophically defined characteristics, like self-consciousness or self-reference, that run across all the novelties in the arts and the disciplines.[11] More common, especially in the West, are those who see it as a socially progressive trend of thought that affirms the power of human beings to create, improve and reshape their environment with the aid of practical experimentation, scientific knowledge, or technology.[12] From this perspective, Modernism encouraged the re-examination of every aspect of existence, from commerce to philosophy, with the goal of finding that which was 'holding back' progress, and replacing it with new ways of reaching the same end. Others focus on Modernism as an aesthetic introspection. This facilitates consideration of specific reactions to the use of technology in the First World War, and anti-technological and nihilistic aspects of the works of diverse thinkers and artists spanning the period from Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) to Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)
However, Literary modernism, or modernist literature, has its origins in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, mainly in Europe and North America. Some philosophers, like Georg Lukacs, theorized that literary modernism had its origins in the philosophy of Walter Benjamin. Modernism is characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional styles of poetry and verse. Modernists experimented with literary form and expression, adhering to Ezra Pound's maxim to "Make it new". The modernist literary movement was driven by a conscious desire to overturn traditional modes of representation and express the new sensibilities of their time. The horrors of the First World War saw the prevailing assumptions about society reassessed. Thinkers such as Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx questioned the rationality of mankind.
EFFECTS OF World War I on Modern LITERATURE.
In fact, you might say that World War I is the hub around which the whole modernist wheel turned. Literary Modernism emerged as a result of changes in the cultural, political, and artistic sensibilities that occurred in the years before, during, and after that war. When you combine the massive growth of fancypants industrial technologies with the all-out devastation of the Great War, you get a recipe for some major angst and major upheaval.
See, the world wasn't quite the same anymore, and writers and artists were struggling to find new ways to create art that reflected those big changes. When it came to style, that meant that writers began to play games with time and order, perspective, point of view, and form. You began to see a lot more novels with fragmented plots than, say, ones with clear beginnings, middles, and ends. In poetry, that meant strange metaphors stacked on top of each other, mixing meters and free verse, and allusions to the past.
Writers chucked linear narratives and chronology out the window in favour of confusing stories that jumped around. They dumped distant, third-person narrators in favour of stream of consciousness and angsty confessionals like, say, that of Prufrock. They referred to traditional works of the past in an effort to outstrip them.
It was all about defying expectations, shaking things up, and knocking readers off their stodgy old Victorian feet. Of course all of these stylistic qualities make modernist literature notoriously difficult. Absalom, Absalom by John Dryden, and you'll see what we mean.
However, literary Modernism was all style and no substance, it is known that it has some major ideas at work, too. It all started with :
Charles Darwin, who forwarded a theory of evolution and natural selection
Sigmund Freud, who pioneered psychoanalysis and revolutionised the way people thought about the brain
Karl Marx, who analysed class inequalities (to say the very least)
Friedrich Nietzsche, who turned the world on its head when he proclaimed that "God is dead." Yowza.
This fearsome foursome changed a great many things about the way folks thought about the world. And that's actually an understatement. Our point here is that all this revolutionary thinking was unsettling to say the least, and writers wanted their work to be unsettling, too. Let's buck tradition, they said, in favor of new, innovative writing that reflects all the changes being thrown our way.
Literary modernists wanted to start a "tradition of the new," as Richard Weston called it, so they threw out the bathwater, the baby, and the sofa, too.
Famous modernist writers include T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Wallace Stevens in poetry; Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and James Joyce in the novel; Bertholt Brecht in drama, and artists like Pablo Picasso and Duchamp. If you spend a few hours poking around these masters' works, you'll see what we mean about bucking tradition. And then some.
The impact of literary Modernism can't be exaggerated. Well, it could be. We could say it killed the dinosaurs. But honestly, it came pretty close. It completely changed the way writers thought about form, style, content, genre, and just about everything in between. Authors today are still writing under the shadow of Modernism; in fact, much of what we read today is considered Postmodern. When everything that comes after you is named "post-you," you know you're pretty stinkin' important.
Major Characteristics of Modern Literature
(1)Marked by a strong and intentional break with tradition. This break includes a strong reaction against established religious, political, and social views.
(2)Belief that the world is created in the act of perceiving it; that is, the world is what we say it is.
(3)There is no such thing as absolute truth. All things are relative.
(4)No connection with history or institutions. Their experience is that of alienation, loss, and despair.
(5)Championship of the individual and celebration of inner strength.
(6)Life is unordered.
(7)Concerned with the sub-conscious.
(8)New insights from the emerging fields of psychology and sociology
(7)Anthropological studies of comparative religion
new theories of electromagnetism and quantum physics
(10) Growing critique of British imperialism and the ideology of empire
(11)The growing force of doctrines of racial superiority in Germany
(12)The escalation of warfare to a global level
shifting power structures, particularly as women enter the work force
(13)the emergence of a new "city consciousness"
new information technologies such as radio and cinema
(14)The advent of mass democracy and the rise of mass communication
Modern Authors
Early modernist writers, especially those writing after World War I and the disillusionment that followed, broke the implicit contract with the general public that artists were the reliable interpreters and representatives of mainstream ("bourgeois") culture and ideas, and, instead, developed unreliable narrators, exposing the "irrationality at the roots of a supposedly rational world".[11]
They also attempted to take into account changing ideas about reality developed by Darwin, Mach, Freud, Einstein, Nietzsche, Bergson and others. From this developed innovative literary techniques such as stream-of-consciousness, interior monologue, as well as the use of multiple points-of-view. This can reflect doubts about the philosophical basis of realism, or alternatively an expansion of our understanding of what is meant by realism. So that, for example the use of stream-of-consciousness, or interior monologue reflects the need for greater psychological realism.
It is debatable when the modernist literary movement began, though some have chosen 1910 as roughly marking the beginning and quote novelist Virginia Woolf, who declared that human nature underwent a fundamental change "on or about December 1910."[12] But modernism was already stirring by 1902, with works such as Joseph Conrad's (1857–1924) Heart of Darkness, while Alfred Jarry's (1873–1907) absurdist play, Ubu Roi appeared even earlier, in 1896.
Among early modernist non-literary landmarks is the atonal ending of Arnold Schoenberg's Second String Quartet in 1908, the Expressionist paintings of Wassily Kandinsky starting in 1903 and culminating with his first abstract painting and the founding of the Expressionist Blue Rider group in Munich in 1911, the rise of fauvism, and the introduction of cubism from the studios of Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and others between 1900 and 1910.
List of Modern Authors.
Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966)
Gabriele d'Annunzio (1863–1938)
Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918)
W. H. Auden (1907–73)
Djuna Barnes (1892–1982)
Samuel Beckett (1906–89)
Gottfried Benn (1886–1956)
Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)
Alexander Blok (1880–1921)
Menno ter Braak (1902–40)
Hermann Broch (1886–1951)
Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)
Basil Bunting (1900–85)
Ivan Cankar (1876–1918)
Mário de Sá-Carneiro (1890–1916)
Constantine P. Cavafy (1863–1933)
Joseph Conrad (1857–1924)
Hart Crane (1899–1932)
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962)
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839–1908)
Rubén Darío
Alfred Döblin (1878–1957)
H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) (1886–1961)
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965)
Ralph W. Ellison (1914–1994)
William Faulkner (1897–1962)
Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939)
E. M. Forster (1879–1971)
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
Robert Frost (1874–1963)
Carlo Emilio Gadda (1893–1973)
Knut Hamsun (1859–1952)
Jaroslav Hašek (1883–1923)
Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874–1929)
Max Jacob (1876–1944)
David Jones (1895–1974)
James Joyce (1882–1941)
Franz Kafka (1883–1924)
Georg Kaiser (1878–1945)
Miroslav Krleža (1893–1981)
Federico García Lorca (1898–1936)
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977)
Mina Loy (1882–1966)
Leopoldo Lugones (1874–1938)
Hugh MacDiarmid (1892–1976)
Osip Mandelstam (1891)–1938)
Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923)
Robert Musil (1880–1942)
Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
Pablo Neruda (1904–1973)
Yone Noguchi (1875–1947)
Aldo Palazzeschi (1885–1974)
John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
Boris Pasternak (1890–1960)
Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935)
Luigi Pirandello (1867–1936)
Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980)
Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
John Cowper Powys (1872–1963)
Marcel Proust (1871- 1922)
Klaus Rifbjerg (born 1931)
Victor Serge (1890–1947)
Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
Wallace Stevens (1875–1955)
Italo Svevo (1861–1928)
Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)
Ernst Toller (1893–1939)
Federigo Tozzi (1883–1920)
Paul Valéry (1871–1945)
Robert Walser (1878–1956)
Nathanael West (1903–1940)
William Carlos Williams (1883–1963)
Frank Wedekind (1864–1918)
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
Lu Xun (1881–1936)
