Contextualize the text from a historical and cultural point of view.

15 – 20 lines

Modernism (1914 – 1950)

(J. Conrad, J. Joyce, G.B. Shaw, V. Woolf, F.S. Fitzgerald am, E. Hemingway am, E. O’Neill am, W. Faulkner
am, T.S. Elliot am)

Modernism was a literary movement that lasted approximately from 1914-1950.

Modernism began the breaking of traditional writing styles that we know today. During this
period, artists began to develop their own individual styles
New technology and the horrifying events of both World Wars (but specifically World
War I) made many people question the future of humanity: What was becoming of the world?
Writers reacted to this question by turning toward Modernist sentiments. Gone was the
Romantic period that focused on nature and being. Modernist fiction spoke of the inner self
and consciousness. Instead of progress, the Modernist writer saw a decline of civilization.
Instead of new technology, the Modernist writer saw cold machinery and increased capitalism,
which alienated the individual and led to loneliness. To achieve the emotions described above,
most Modernist fiction was cast in first person. Whereas earlier, most literature had a clear
beginning, middle, and end (or introduction, conflict, and resolution), the Modernist story was
often more of a stream of consciousness, creating the feeling that the story is going nowhere.
Irony, satire, and comparisons were often employed to point out society's ills.
Post modernism (1950 - )
(Golding 1954)

The text belongs to postmodernism, a postwar cultural movement, started around 1950,
that reacted against tendencies in modernism, and was typically marked by revival of historical
elements and techniques. Postmodernist society is characterized by changes to institutions and
creations and with social and political results and innovations, globally but especially in the
West.
Postmodern authors tend to depict the world as having already undergone countless
disasters and being beyond redemption or understanding. Postmodern literature reflects late
modern society by showing the individual’s inability to establish a personal identity based on a
historical or social background, let alone family and work. Postmodern literature is, to a great
extent, a play on words which reflects the meaninglessness of the late modern world, which is
seen as fragmented, disoriented, chaotic, but this leads neither to despair nor to any wish to re-
establish order. The binary contrasts of good/evil, true/false, real/unreal and order/chaos have
been abolished. The world is pure surface, it is what it appears to be. Hence each individual
creates his or her own world and identity through the pictures which he or she sees in literature
and other art forms or in the so-called world. The Great Narratives, which began to be
questioned in Modernism, are rejected in Postmodernism. There is no acknowledgment of a
universal truth.