20th century literature

Modernism
 20 century literature
th

 a period of great artistic change

 dominated by
the impact of two world wars
the artistic concerns of modernism (which
affected both themes and methods of writing).
 I. Historical Background
 II. Modernism
 I. Historical Background
 The First World War was usually regarded as
a watershed in English history, for it
hastened radical changes in every field of
English society.
 But the changes started long before the war.
 1. The First World War
 capitalism came into its monopoly stage in
Britain
 the sharpened contradictions between
socialized production and the private ownership
caused frequent
 economic depressions
 mass unemployment
greatly slowed down the speed of British economic
development.
 Having lost her industrial supremacy, Britain
faced a severe challenge from Germany and
other newly-arisen imperialist countries for the
redivision of the world, which led to the
outbreak of the First World War (1914-1918).
 2. The Boer War
 1899-1902 . Waged by the British imperialists
to effect a political and economic control over
the Boer Republics of South Africa
 another example to mark the rapid decline of
the British Empire
 Effect similar to that of the Vietnam War in the
American sixties.
 Consequences of WWI
 World War I tremendously weakened the
British Empire.
 For the first time, Britain became a debtor
nation, and London lost its position as the
financial center of the world.
 Postwar economic dislocation and spiritual
disillusion produced a profound impact upon
the British people.
 3. The Second World War
 WWII marked the last stage of the
disintegration of the British Empire.
 Britain suffered heavy losses in the war.

 thousands of people killed

 the economy was ruined.

 4. Post-war
 Most of her colonies had been tempered
and awakened by the war.
 After the war, a powerful movement for
independence began rising. India, “the
brightest jewel in the British Crown”, took
the lead and won her independence in 1947.
 The other colonies followed
suit in a quick succession.
 Up to 1970, Britain had lost
almost all her former
colonies.
 The once sun-never-set
Empire finally collapsed.
 End of Empire
 The end of the British Empire enormously
lessened Britain’s power and influence over
the world.
 The postwar adjustment to Britain's shifting
position was hard and painful.
 In those years, the Labour and Conservative
governments replaced one another without
being able to discover a new destiny to
inspire and unite the people.
Ⅱ. Cultural Background

 1. New Theories and

Ideas
 2. Modernism
 1. New Theories and Ideas
 In the second half of the 19th century and
the early decades of the 20th century, both
natural and social sciences had advanced in
an enormous way.
 pessimism or determinism
 Rapid development of natural sciences not
only led to great gains in material wealth,
but also gave rise to all kinds of pessimism
or determinism, which became a standard
feature of late Victorian thought.
 Naturalism is one of its reflections in
literature.
 1) Darwin’s theory of evolution
 2) Einstein’s theory of relativity

 3) Sigmund Freud’s analytical psychology

 4) Karl Marx

 5) Arthur Schopenhauer

 6) Friedrich Nietzsche

 7) Henry Bergson’s irrational philosophy

 8) Sartre's existentialism
 1) Darwin’s theory of evolution
& Spencer’s Social Darwinism
 exerted a strong influence over people's thoughts
 caused many to lose their religious faith

 But the social Darwinists, under the cover of “Survival of the Fittest”, vehemently
advocated colonialism or jingoism, which was
eulogized by Kipling
criticized by Conrad and Forster
 Herbert Spencer’s Social
Darwinism
 Herbert applied Darwin’s evolutionary theory
to human society.
1, Struggle for existence.
2, Survival of the fittest.
 Herbert’ social Darwinism served the
Bourgeois class.
 Utilitarianism and Social Darwinism served the
Bourgeois class.
 Darwin’s evolutionary theory shattered
Christian belief.
 2) Einstein's theory of relativity

 gave a great momentum to scientific research

 provided entirely new ideas to the concepts of
time and space
 3) Sigmund Freud’s analytical psychology

 the most important theory of the 20th century

 dramatically altered our conception of human
nature in both life and literature
 4) Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels

 put forward the theory of scientific socialism ：

provides a guiding principle for the working class

inspires them to make dauntless fights for their own

emancipation
 5) Arthur Schopenhauer
( 1788-1860)
 a pessimistic philosopher
 first started a rebellion against rationalism

(then dominant philosophy in Europe)

 stressed the importance of will and intuition in
his The World as Will and Representation
 6) Friedrich Nietzsche
(1844-1900)

 inherited the basic principles from Schopenhauer

 further sharpened the criticism of rationalism by
advocating the doctrines of power and superman
rejecting Christian morality completely.
Nietzsche puts the statement "God is Dead" into
the mouth of a "madman" in The Gay Science
 7) Henry Bergson(1859-1941)’s
irrational philosophy

 established his irrational philosophy, which

placed emphasis on
creation

intuition

irrationality

unconsciousness
 Bergson’s Ideas
 His conceptions of life impulse and psychic
time made the Western idealist philosophy
afresh.
 These irrationalist philosophers exerted an
immense influence over the major modernist
writers in Britain.
8) Sartre's existentialism
 carried the irrational philosophy
to an absurd extreme
 touched upon the major aspects
of life in the Western world
 Existentialist ideas
 “the world was absurd, and the human
life was an agony.”
 The truth is that everyone is bored.
 New LiteraryTrends
 existentialistliterature
 theatre of the absurd

 new kind of fiction: modernism

 2. Modernism
 English literary modernism grew out of a
general sense of disillusionment with
Victorian attitudes of certainty,
conservatism, and objective truth.
 the earliest examples of the movement's
attitudes appeared in the mid to late
nineteenth century
 literary modernism reached its peak
between the First and Second World Wars
 In the first decades of the 20th century
several major works of modernism were
published, including
short story collection Dubliners by James Joyce
Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness
Poetry and drama of William Butler Yeats
 Authors
 Important novelists between the World Wars
included
Virginia Woolf
E. M. Forster
Evelyn Waugh
D. H. Lawrence
1) Appearance of all kinds of trends
of modernism in Art
 Expressionism
 Surrealism
 Futurism
 Dadaism
 Imagism
 Stream of consciousness
 Modernism also touched upon visual arts,
music, dance and the other fields of social
life.
 Towards the 1920s,these trends converged
into a mighty torrent of modernist
movement, which swept across Europe and
America.
 Major figures associated with modernism:
Kafka
Picasso
Pound
Eliot
Joyce
Virginia Woolf
 Modernism was somewhat curbed in the
1930s.
 2. Features of Modernist
Literature
 1) Modernism marks a strong and conscious
break with the past.
 It does not only reject history and society,
but also the moral, religious and cultural
values of the past.
 Features of Modernist Literature
 2) Modernism rose out of the skepticism and
disillusion of capitalism.
this made writers and artists search for new
ways to express their understanding of the
world and human nature.
 Features of Modernist Literature
3) Modernism emphasizes the need to move
away from the public to the private, from the
objective to the subjective.
It elevates the individual and the inner being
over the social being, prefers the sub-conscious
to the self-conscious, and stresses passion
and will over reason and intellection, dynamic
visions over static images.
Features of Modernist Literature
 Writers believe the only reliable truth lies
inside each human being, therefore they aim
to describe, through a new form of fiction,
what takes place inside the mind of their
characters.
 Influences on Modernism
 4) French symbolism heralded modernism
appeared in the late, 19th century
became the forerunner of modernism
 Theoretical Bases
 5) The theoretical bases:
the irrational philosophy
the theory of psycho-analysis
 Modernist View of Time
 6) Modernism upholds a new view of time by
emphasizing psychic time (time within the
mind) over chronological time.
 It maintains that the past, the present and
the future are one and exist at the same
time in the consciousness of individuals as a
continuous flow rather than a series of
separate moments. (Bergson’s influence)
 7) The major themes of modernist literature
are the
distorted
alienated
ill relationships
 between
man and nature
man and society
man and man
man and himself
 5) Modernism is, in many ways, a reaction
against realism.
 It rejects rationalism, which is the theoretical
base of realism.
 It excludes from its major concern the
external, objective, material world which is
the only creative source of realism.
 It does this by advocating a free
experimentation on new forms and new
techniques in literary creation, it casts away
almost all the traditional elements in
literature like story, plot, character,
chronological narration, and etc., which are
essential to realism.
 As a result, the works created by the
modernist writers can often be labeled as
anti-novel, anti-poetry or anti-drama.
 Stream of Consciousness
 Stream of Consciousness was a literary
technique in which a character's thoughts
are presented in the confusing, jumbled, and
inconsequential manner of real life without
any clarification by the author.  
 Its best known exponents are Marcel
Proust, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce.
 Virginia Woolf 　
 Virginia Woolf was part of the Bloomsbury
Group, a group of philosophers, writers, and
artists who met in the Bloomsbury section of
London. 
 This group included many different types of
people such as John Maynard Keynes,
Lytton Strachey, and E.M. Forster. 
 Virginia Woolf experimented with Stream of
Consciousness in her work:
 Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse
(1927), and The Waves (1931),
 all of which concern the feelings brought on by
common experiences. 
 She was a brilliant critic, some of which was
published in The Common Reader (1925). 
 Marcel Proust

 French novelist
 wrote  Remembrance of Things Past
(1905), probably one of the greatest novels
of the 20th century. 
 wrote it after retiring from Parisian society
and living alone from 1907-1919. 
 It explores time, consciousness, and
memory, it was extremely influential in
changing the way novels are written.
 James Joyce

 James Joyce developed the Stream of

Consciousness style of writing by allowing
his readers to live in the minds of the
characters. 
 Born in Ireland in 1882, he continued to
write about Ireland for the rest of his life,
even though he had left. 
 James Joyce
 He wrote Ulysses (1922), an immensely influential
book, using the framework of the Homer myth to
create his own private language. 
 He took this a step further in Finnegans Wake
(1939), where he explored dream consciousness. 
 He also wrote Dubliners (1914), and the
autobiographical A Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man (1916) before dying in 1941.
 Other Significant Authors
 W. B. Yeats (1865-1939)
 E. M. Forster (1879-1970)

 Franz Kafka (1883-1924) (German)

 T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
 E.M. FORSTER
 English novelist
 His work concerned the differences between truth and
falsehood, culture and emotion, and private and public life. 
 Works:
 The Longest Journey (1907)
 A Room with a View (1908)
 Howard‘s End  (1910)
 A Passage to India (1924)
 Aspects of the Novel (1927) (Literary criticism)
 Franz Kafka(influence)
 German writer born to controlling and
dominating Jewish parents. 
 He writings reflect his sense of seclusion, and
his inhibitions and shortcomings. 
 His writing is often surreal and nightmarish
with characters involved in impossible
situations. 
 Kafka
 Works:
The Hunger Artist
The Trial
The Castle
Amerika
Metamorphosis
 T.S. ELIOT
 A major twentieth century poet. 
 An American living in England, he used
modern styles to present classical and
traditional ideas. 
 Works: Prufock and Other Observations
(1917), Ash Wednesday (1930), and Four
Quartets (1944). 
 T.S. ELIOT
 His most famous poem, The Waste Land
(1922), portrayed the chaos of modern life. 
 He was awarded the Noble Prize for
Literature in 1948. 
 After becoming a British subject, he wrote
many plays and poetical dramas before his
death in London in 1965.
 William Butler Yeats 

 Irish poet and dramatist. 

 He led the Celtic Renaissance and
cofounded Dublin's Irish Literary Theatre
(later the Abbey Theatre). 
 Using nationalism as his driving theme, he
wrote heavily on Irish legend in his early
poetry.
 W. B. Yeats
 Later his work matured as in The Wild
Swans at Coole (1917),  Michael Robartes
and the Dancer (1922), The Tower  (1928),
and Last Poems (1940). 
 He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in
1923.