20th Century English Literature

Modernism

• Initially, the term Modernism referred to characteristics of modern life in

general
• There are differences between Modernism and Modernity as the latter is
a concept which modifies with age, purely historical meaning and
context. Modernity – similar to avant-garde.
• The Modernists = writers who reshaped creation in accordance with the
new changes in society.
• Modern, Modernism and Modernity have been in use in artistic and
literary contexts to convey a sense of historical relativism, i.e. things and
history do not have an absolute value.

Criticism generally situates the beginnings of modernism around 1910

as the period between 1910-1930 (a.k.a. High Modernism) was characterized by
a tremendous wave of new literary ideas in almost all European countries.
We already know that each trend appears as a reaction to a previous
trend, so we shouldn’t be amazed if modernism was at first a psychological
movement of rejection of Victorian literature.
The writers at the beginning of the 20th century faced new realities,
interests and relationships to the environment which became obvious in their
concern with the individual, the atypical, the subjective consciousness.

Differences between Realism and Modernism

Realism
 Themes: social life, marriage, fortune, social ambition => external
manifestation
 Character: subordinated to plot and themes
 Structure: neglected, spontaneity of method

Modernism
 Dismisses middle-class commercial values and concerns, introducing
new psychological and existential themes => inner consciousness
 individuality emphasized – prevalence of the character
 Well-structured, carefully designed books according to a preliminary plan
Influences
 Einstein’s theory of relativity
 Schopenhauer, Nietzsche => reinvention of values
 Henri Bergson: objective vs. subjective time
 Freud: the subconscious
 Marx: the future of capitalism

Conclusion: the beginning of the century, a tormented period altogether,

brought about a considerable amount of anxiety, skepticism and disenchantment
towards life (therefore, pessimistic attitude as opposed to Victorian optimism)

In the Five Instances of Modernity, Matei Calinescu distinguishes the two

types of Modernity:
- The bourgeois idea of modernity – deals with all the new ideas that
appeared during history and is characterized by:
- The cult of reason (rationality)
- The doctrine of progress – beneficial possibilities of
technology
- Ideal of freedom
- The avant-garde idea of modernity – radical anti-bourgeois attitude:
- Disgusted by the middle-class set of values
- Characterized by rebellion, anarchy, apocalyptic
vision, self-exile, alienation, detachment and
superiority.

At the beginning of the 1920s, Modernism moved from a general sense

of sympathy with the new to a more specific association with the experimental
in the arts. A key word of Modernism will be experimentation, which had as a
major consequence the recognition of the supremacy of the form over the
content.
Art becomes self-aware, conscious of its own existence, which brought
about meditation on the very idea of creation (in literature – abundance of meta-
narratives).

Because of its experimental character, Modernism was generally

acknowledged as an eclectic form of art, sometimes less accessible and
certainly very heterogeneous, exhibiting elements deriving from different
sources, different arts.
 Modernism interested all forms of art besides literature. In music, one of
the effects was at a certain point the destruction of the conventional structure of
the tone => a-tonal music. Modern music is often thought to begin with, or just
after, Debussy’s impressionist works. Other examples: Luigi Russolo, Harry
Partch.
In painting, modernism witnessed:
- post-impressionism (Van Gogh, Cezanne) – suggestion, impression, light,
memory of the artist
- cubism (Picasso)
- expressionism (Edvard Munch, the Cry) – exaggeration of some features
of reality
- surrealism – reality of the spirit/dream, not accessible to the common
audience
- fauvism
- Pop Art, minimalism, New Age, etc.

The boundaries between arts become very thin and elements derived
from painting, architecture and music are to be noted in literature as well.
Literary avant-garde described a swift movement from
- symbolism to
- futurism
- imagism (the suggestion of the image)
- existentialism
- Dadaism (mechanical attempt to create literature)