PsyPhiLit Magic

14. Modernism

Modernism

Origin:
Literary modernism, or modernist literature, has its origins in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, mainly in Europe and North America, and is characterized by a very self-conscious break with traditional ways of writing, in both poetry and prose fiction. Modernists experimented with literary form and expression, as exemplified by Ezra Pound's maxim to "Make it new."

Description:
This 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, and modernist writers were influenced by such thinkers as Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx, amongst others, who raised questions about the rationality of the human mind.

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.

Literary Modernism emerged as a result of changes in the cultural, political, and artistic sensibilities that occurred in the years before, during, and after World War I. When you combine the massive growth of industrial technologies with the all-out devastation of the Great War, you get a recipe for massive agitation and major upheaval.

With the war and new technology, 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 favor of confusing stories that jumped around. They dumped distant, third-person narrators in favor of stream of consciousness and angsty confessionals like 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. Spend an hour reading Absalom, Absalom! and you'll see what we mean.

Features:

• Marked by a strong and intentional break with tradition. This break includes a strong reaction against established religious, political, and social views.

• Belief that the world is created in the act of perceiving it; that is, the world is what we  say it is

• There is no such thing as absolute truth. All things are relative.

• No connection with history or institutions. Their experience is that of alienation, loss, and despair.

•Championship of the individual and celebration of inner strength.

• Life is unordered.
Concerned with the subconscious.

Examples:

1. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1899/1902):
An early example of linguistic ambiguity and indeterminacy, Conrad’s tale of the corrupt imperialism that upholds “civilized” culture is constructed through a nested, layered narrative and features some of the most cryptic language ever written (e.g., "It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention"). Things become increasingly surreal as Marlow approaches the mysterious Kurtz. If you think Marlon Brando’s “The horror! The horror!” is chilling, wait until you reach the one-two punch of Conrad’s conclusion.

2. T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land (1922):
The primer of poetic modernism and the quintessential statement of post-war despondency. Eliot barrages his reader with seemingly disconnected images and snippets ranging from Ovid, Shakespeare, and Sanskrit chants to jazz tunes and a bored couple’s post-coital thoughts. When read carefully, repeating themes and evocative, lyrical passages cohere around a desire: “These fragments I have shored against my ruins.” Even at this moment of sweeping disillusionment, language offers a glimmer of hope.

3. James Joyce, Ulysses (1922):
At its heart, Ulysses is a simple story about an estranged couple and a disheartened young man in Dublin on June 16, 1904 (“Bloomsday”). True, the narrative constantly migrates from the present to the past, and from one character’s mind to another’s, and its network of literary, philosophical, and historical references proclaims that this novel is smarter than you are. But Ulysses is also hilarious, playful, bawdy, and at times downright moving. By the time you finish, you will know the main characters better than your closest friends, thanks to Joyce’s stunning stream of consciousness. And you’ll know every narrative trick there is, as Joyce anticipates the literary pyrotechnics of Nabokov, Pynchon, David Foster Wallace, and everyone else who followed him.

4. Virginia Woolf, To The Lighthouse (1927):
A novel about time, perception, aesthetics, gender roles, and death, but grounded in compelling, idiosyncratic characters like the patriarchal yet helpless Mr. Ramsay and his quietly powerful wife. Lyrical, puzzling, and shocking by turns (note how Woolf puts the violence of war and major deaths in brackets), few novels rival this one for formal invention and sheer beauty.

5. Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952):
A late reflection on modernism, Invisible Man channels Kafka and Dostoyevsky in its fierce commentary on race and politics in America. Alternately surreal, symbolic, and naturalistic, the novel has the quality of a waking nightmare. The ugliness of the “Battle Royal” episode equals anything in Dante’s Inferno.