Modernity

The Term and Time frame

 Modern or Modernity or Modernism
used to refer to a particular time and
attitude
 Late 1800s to around WWII
The Romantic Mindset—from
Whitman’s Song of Myself (1855)
I Celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belong to me, as good
belongs to you.
 
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a
spear of summer grass.
The Modern Mindset—from Yeats’
“Second Coming” (1920)
Things fall apart, the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and
everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the
worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Technological developments that
might be considered “Modern”
 Industrial Revolution
 Electricity
 Transportation
 Modern
conveniences
 Sense of PROGRESS
What happened to change
the optimism?

Or, what kinds of changes

led Yeats to sound so
different from Whitman?
World War I
Effects of Industrial Revolutions
Freud’s new understanding of
the mind and unconscious
 Challenge to the
concept of our
rational selves
 Raises a question of
how much “control”
we have over
ourselves
Developments in Physics
 Einstein’s Theory of
Relativity
 Heisenberg’s
Uncertainty Principle
Modern Christianity
 Nietzsche’s “Death of God”
 Challenges from science
 Fundamentalist response
Developments in the arts
Move from
representational art

a portion of Picasso’s
Guernica
Virginia Woolf: “On
or about December,
1910, human
character changed.”

Key term: Solipsism

Edvard Munch,
The Scream