Modernism:

 modernism means to create new

 it means “ the tradition of new”
 A complex movement which started after 1901 and flourished between 1910 to 1920s and
1930s involving all forms of art; literature, music, visual art, cinema etc
 It was an international and interdisciplinary movement
 A strong and international break with the traditions against established religious, social and
political views
 It was totally opposite from Romantic (1798-1837) age and Victorian age (1837-1901)
 It believed in rational thinking
 It includes science and psychology
 Discusses the impact of colonialism
 Prose created the most (bitter, satire, scientific fiction and realistic)
 Absorbs the effects of WW-1 and WW-2
 Antiwar literature and absurd theatre
 New term AVANT-GARDE was introduced
 Writers started to see themselves in more international terms
 Absorbed influences from other countries
 Modern literature exhibits perspectives. It means meanings come from individual perspective
 Modern literature deals with pessimism, melancholy, disillusionment, sense of fragmentation,
scientific methodology,
 In modern literature there is decay of plot and character
 Modernists considered the experience of ordinary people as a poor, fragmented form of
experience often represented the lives of ordinary people in a patronizing manner
 Interiority is represented. Inner psychology
 Perception of language changed. It means language is thick with multiple meanings
 Modernism is ahistorical/ apolitical
 In modernism, words are in action
 Modernism focuses on functional meaning of words
 Modernism is self-referential. It means literature does not mean to any outside reality
 In modernist prose words seems to walk
 Modernism is against DE familiarization. De familiarization means to make things strange
 In modernism, human thinking has been synchronic (same thinking).
 According to historical perspective, human thinking has been diachronic ( not same)
 As modernism is ahistorical so it means human thinking has been same
 According to political perspective, modernism is apolitical which means “socialist-communist
propaganda should not spread
 Ezra Pound was a major figure among the early writers under modernism was also the founder
of “Imagist movement” believes in the functional value of words not ornamental
 Emphasis of experimentation. It means open endedness
 Desire to make a clear break with traditions which came before
 Attempts to directly represent the working of mind and unconscious
 Modernist works are fragmentary, relative and favor a subjective perception of reality
 It shows no connection with history and institutions.
 Nothing as absolute truth is relative
 Rise of mass communication
 Celebration of inner strength
 Collapse of morality/ values
 Confused sense of ideology
 Full of Chaotic, futile, pessimism and fluctuation
 Breakdown of social norms
 Disillusionment
 Product of metro-polis
 Stream of consciousness
 Experimentation in form and style
 Dislocation of meanings
 People make their own meaning
 Substitution of mythical past
 Wisdom and spirituality of the past was shifted towards spiritual emptiness of the present
 Actually it was a revolt against romanticism
 It is fascinated with the freedom of choice in subject matter
 It was a complete rejection of old forms
 It believed in realism rather than imaginations
 It is fascinated with the loss of faith
 Modernism was an age of meaninglessness
 Modernism focuses on intellectuality
 An age of science and scientific discoveries
 Reconstruction of new values
 Because of political turmoil revolutionary ideologies rise: Fascism, Nazism, Communism
 Modernism focuses on construction
 According to modernism, “literature itself constructs reality not reflects reality”
 In other words, “to describe reality is to kill reality”
 Modern poetry was a combination and manipulation of the elements of the old to make
something new

Following are the general characteristics of modern poetry

o Complete rejections of romantic ideas
o Individual genius
o Felt emotions
o Originality
 o Impersonal
o Full of wide range of references and quotations from different cultures and language
which are often juxtaposed with the scenes of everyday life
o Concise use of language and imagery
o Free rhythm (free verse)
o It was written in open form
o It is full of classical allusions
o Intertextuality
o Metanarrative
 Followings are the major themes of modern poetry
o Inability to communicate
o Sterility
o Corruption
o Lack of love
o Search for truth

Modern Drama:

Following are the main theme of modern drama.

 It deals with a problem of a common man.

 It is shift from idealism to realism.
 It devoid of super natural elements, super human encounter and
heroic characters.
 It has no fantasy and no sentimentalism.
 Modern drama deals with encounter of man with other men. As
earlier mentioned it is a drama of common man.
 Common women and men are presented as characters.
 Modern drama deals with the tragedy of common man.
 The key concern of a modern drama are of existential or survival. In
modern drama a common man presented to fight the battle for
survival.
 Unlike Greek or classical drama there is no villain in modern drama.
 Man is not shown as the victim of fate rather man is shown as the
victim of circumstances.
 Modern drama neither praise nor blames.
 It is not based on assumptions.
 In modern drama man is shown in an encounter with social system. It
means whole social system is the villain.
 It does not deal with nature or destiny. It does not deal with theories
rather it deals with practical situation.
 It deals with poverty, exploitation, class difference, capitalism,
materialism, wars and romantic illusions.
 Basically modern drama is a drama of revolt.
 It is the drama of angry young man and angry old man. Young man
complains that life has become monotonous and nothing has
changed and the old complains that everything has changed. It
means that generation gap is also a main issue in modern drama.
 Modern drama though light on social revolt, gender revolt and
religious revolt.
 Modern drama emphasizes on the role of family which is the most
broken institution of modern times. A family is always held together
by a woman.
 Another key concern of modern drama is that it takes largely women
as a male subject. It deals with a feministic problem that is
exploitation of women by men.
 Modern drama is anti-authority. It believes in total destruction of
convention.
 It is anti-authority the authority of parents, state and church
(religion).
 Modern drama is largely scientific.
 Modern drama is a psychological and behavioral study of characters.
 It is concerned with middle class sophistication.
  Henrik Ibsen changed the medium of drama. He used prose than
language rather than dialogues. Even some Greek plays were written
in the form of verse.
 Poetry is the language of emotions while Prose is language of
reasons.
 Ibsen made drama serious, analytical.
 Classical drama was a drama of homogeneous society while modern
drama was drama of heterogeneous society. In homogeneous society
people have same beliefs, same thoughts and same ideas while in
heterogeneous society is disintegrating society because there is
difference of ideas, thoughts and beliefs. So, modern drama does not
teach any specific moral lesson.
 Modern drama is very innovative. It is full of extensive use of
symbolism and other available devices of communication such as
Impressionism, Expressionism, Surrealism, Naturalism, Realism and
night mares. It also uses the technique of masking.
 It also deals with the Absurdity of life (Theatre of Absurd).

Themes in Modern Drama:

 Existentialism
 Absurdity of life
 Aging
 Ambition and fame
 Betrayal and guilt
 Courtship
 Decision and life choices
 Issues of sexuality
 Law and justice
 Life lie
 Magic and supernatural
 Marriage
  Parents and children
 Religion
 World of deaf and blind (not to take these disabilities as limitation but
considering them socially)
 Dehumanization at work place in capitalist society
 Women issues
 War and violence (Earnest Hemingway)
 Community

Key concerns:
 Futility of conventional objectives
o Religion
o Science
o Progress
o Values
o Brotherhood
o Eternity
 Breakdown of conventional ideas of science, progress
 Quest for meaning
 No hold on values
 Quest for self-knowledge/ self-actualization
 Cruelty of existence
o Alienation
o Breakdown of social institutions
o Nothingness of life
o Question of recognition
o Void
 Metaphysical concerns
o Meaningful set of values
o Special existence
 Multiple perception of reality
 Many versions of reality
 Does not accept all versions of reality
 Multiple signifiers but single signified
 Negation of God
 Theatre of revolt
 No linear progression of plot
 Science negates religion; absurdity negates science
 Ideals attached with science and progress are questioned
 The use of implicit (understatement)
 Impractical things are ignored in modern texts
 Away from magical and mythical perspectives
 The change in form and context
 Rediscovery of history
 Modernism goes to awareness not activism

Characteristics of modern novel

 Modern novel is remarkable for its popularity, variety and complexity.
 Novels are being written practically on all possible themes and subjects.
 The modern novel is realistic. It deals with all the facts of contemporary life,
the pleasant as well as the unpleasant, the beautiful as well as the ugly, and
does not present merely a one sided view of life. Life is presented with
detached accurate, regardless of morals or ideological considerations. The
sufferings of the poor, their misery and wretchedness, as well as good in
them, their sense of social solidarity, their follow felling and sympathy, are
realistically presented.
 The modern age is an era of disintegration and interrogation.
 Old values have been discarded and they have not been replaced by new
ones. Man is today caught between “two worlds, the one dying, and the
other seeking to be born”. The choice between capitalism and
communism, science and religion. God and the Atom Bomb is a difficult
one, and the result is that man is baffled and confused.
 The modern novel presents realistically the doubts, and conflicts and
frustrations of the modern worlds
 It is therefore, pessimistic in tone.
 There is large scale criticism. Even condemnation of contemporary values
and civilization, E.M. Forster is undisguised in his attack on the business
mind, the worship of bigness in industrialized England of the post-war
generations. Aldous Huxley analyses the disease of modern civilization and
searches for a cure, and Conrad’s novel are all pessimistic and tragic.
 The realism of the modern novel is nowhere seen to better advantage than
in the treatment of sex. The novel has entirely broken free from the
Victorian inhibition of sex.
 There is a frank and free treatment of the problems of love, sex and
marriage.
 The modern novel is neither merely an entertainment nor merely light
story meant for after dinner reading. It has evolved as a serious art form.
 It is very well constructed having nothing loose or rambling about it. As E.
Albert points out, “Henry James Conard evolved techniques which
revolutionized the form of the novel. Edwin Mure is right in pointing out
that plot seems to have died out of the 20th century “Stream of
consciousness novel”.
 “The great modern novels like Ulysses are still stories but they are stories,
without an ending and the characteristic modern novel is a story without an
ending”.
 The modern novel is like an incomplete sentence and “its incompleteness is
a reflection of the incompleteness of a whole region of thought and belief”.
 Under the influence of new psychological theories, life is not regarded as a
continuous flow, but as a series of separate and successive moments.
 The modern novel is predominantly psychological. Novelists like Henry
James, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, have made the English
novel extremely psychological in nature.
 They revealed that human consciousness has very deep layers, and buried
under the conscious, are the sub-conscious and the unconscious.