Following World War I, people who had previously romanticized the ideas of war and perspectives on life were dismayed by the devastating amount of pain and loss that they experienced. Due to the excruciating pains of war, people across the world began to lose faith in humanity, religion and began to change their perspectives on life itself. The Great War caused many people to feel pessimistic towards life and questioning its ultimate purpose. From this overflow of emotion sprang a new form of thinking and expression that is known today as modernism. Modernism is rooted in people’s beliefs that their existent day to day lives were not fitting for the new emerging social, political, and economic changes that were occuring in the world. The …show more content…
Previous forms of literature were very structured, including a full introduction, climax, and conclusion. However, in modernist literature there is never a structured story, but rather a collection of different events and character interactions that represent the issues of society making readers sometimes confused or uneasy. Both J.M. Coetzee and Hemingway present these views in their works Elizabeth Costello and The Sun Also Rises.
The most evident of the two works in its modernistic feel is Hemingway’s novel, mostly because of the way Hemingway portrays these modernistic ideals in an enticing story. Beginning with the time period, The Sun Also Rises takes place right after World War I and many of the characters throughout the novel had previously served in the war, or was affected by the war in one way or another. Hemingway excellently portrays, in his story, how people changed during this time and turned into the “Lost Generation”, displaced from the war, always searching for a purpose, and trying to find happiness in all the wrong places. For example, the main character, Jake, along with most of the other characters takes on the occupation as a writer and consumes the rest of his time drinking and partying with no purpose. Jake is alluded to have suffered from impotency when he first exclaims “‘I got hurt in the war’” (Hemingway 24), and as a result, cannot be with the woman whom he loves. Brett
In both life and literature, humans often idealize what they want their life to be like. This is formally known as romanticism, a concept that is characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism. Although romanticism arose during the early to mid 1800s, it heavily influenced the modern literature movement of the 1910s, which largely focused on the cultural disarray of the world after World War I. One of the most famous literary figures to be influenced by romanticism and emerge from the modern literature movement was Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway’s first novel, The Sun Also Rises reveals certain ideals of Romanticism, demonstrated within many of the characters from the novel. Romanticism in The Sun Also Rises, proves to be a volatile way of both living and thinking, destroying both the lives and relationships of many of the characters.
Modernist artists believed that their works should reflect the true state of the world. These artists saw it as their job to unite the world together, and to help heal the wounds everyone felt. At the turn of the 20th century, the world was in turmoil. With the birth of seemingly supernatural technologies, people began to lose their faith ranging from religious views to how to properly act and dress. The tipping point of all of this tumult was the Great War.
The definition of the Modernist period of art is artistic work produced during the period of the 1860s to the 1970s, and it denotes the styles and philosophy of the art produced during that era. The term Modernist is usually associated with art that is experimenting and is not regarding traditions of the past. Two examples Modernist movements include geometric abstraction and surrealism which are both similar and different in many ways.
To begin with, to determine the meaning of postmodernism is possible only through the relationship with modernism. Modernism in modern science is understood as a kind of cultural consciousness, which is implemented in the artistic practice of symbolism, expressionism and acmeism. In the socio-historical context, it means the period of modernism in the development of culture from the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth century, that is, from Impressionism to a new novel and the theatre of the absurd. Modernism as a world based on the principles of urbanism (the cult of the city), technologism (the cult of the industry), primitivism (the cult of the underdeveloped role model), and others. Postmodernism simultaneously grows and is repelled by the picture of the world, established in modernism. Overcoming modernist tendencies, postmodern cult of the city replaces cosmism, values of industrial society - environmentalism, denying mindless nature and asserting the need for harmonious relations between society and nature. Thus, the ideological concept of postmodernism includes the principles of cosmism, environmentalism and post humanism in a culture of active includes sexual minorities, and the ideas of feminism. Art of modernism and postmodernism is the realization of a universal picture of the world, reflecting the human consciousness of the twentieth century, the main feature of which is the new principle of the relation of being and consciousness.
Throughout time, the changes in society have been represented in art, literature, and music. These works have been organized into movements to better see the development of society and how different events have affected it. One of the most prominent movements that displayed the drastic changes in society was Modernism. Modernism was a break from tradition and exemplified the unique changes in societal views. Beginning after multiple cultural shocks, especially World War I, this movement was characterized by the alienation of the individual and preoccupation with one’s inner-self.
What further contributed to the rise of modernism was the First World War, which shell-shocked many. People lost their sense of certainty and it made them change their points of views. It made modernists question civilisation. This is seen in T.S Eliot’s poem “The Wasteland” which questions
Victorianism in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Modernism in The Metamorphosis
The modernist period in British and Irish literature was one of the most important and exciting times in literary history. The term modernist stemmed from the beginning of the 20th century labelled the modern period. The modern period was a time of confusion and transitions, mostly due to the result of people returning from World War I. The modern period was an era of massive unemployment and technological changes. Freud, Jung, and Marx were redefining human identity, Assembly lines and factories were being introduced, and gender differences were starting to crumble. The modern period was a time of change, and the field of Literature was no exception. Susan Gorsky, in her book titled Virginia Woolf, states that " Virginia Woolf perhaps
The opening of a new decade in the 20th century, had brought on a new era of vista of human prospects. It put into question previously accepted means in consequence of evaluating and assessing the worth of new ideas. It was a new approach to society's standardised conceptions, and was marked by experimentation and manipulation through the apprehension that knowledge is not absolute. “Modernism released us from the constraints of everything that had gone before with a euphoric sense of
In the past five weeks, we have covered a great deal of material in this course. I remember my first day coming to class, I had to check my schedule multiple times to ensure that I was in the correct place. After spending hours of my morning in back-to-back philosophy courses, medieval and 20th-century, I was convinced that I had somehow walked into another philosophy class rather than English. However, as it turns out, I was in the right place. It also turns out that I did know very much about modernism or literary modernism. I soon discovered that modernist literature is greatly rooted in the philosophical movement of modernism that took place in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This was a movement that centered on the heightened awareness of the self.
Ernest Hemingway’s classic historical fiction novel The Sun Also Rises comprises an eventful timeline: bullfighting, fishing trips, male friendship, disguised alcoholism, and the differences between femininity and masculinity and how they overlap. . His 1926 novel about members of an expatriate friend group and one pivotal fiesta in Spain portrays a story rife with unrequited love, symbolism, and metaphors for the Lost Generation in Europe. However, the way Hemingway focuses on masculinity and femininity interplaying with each other and contrasts the effects of the two on all characters and story stands out to the audience.
Literary modernism gained popularity in places like Europe and North America during the early 20th century. Modernism was a rejection of old Victorian writing styles and a movement towards new and experimental ideas. This denial of old ideals stemmed from the recently fought World War One. The war, as well as the many atrocities that were witnessed during it, caused many people to reassess the way they thought about the world and the direction it was heading. Modernist authors many of whom fought in the war saw the world transforming before their eyes; they witnessed entire cities shift towards modern day industrialization. Many authors saw this change as a movement away from the common man and as a migration towards machines and equipment. This is evident in many prominent modernist works of the time which were predominantly written in the first person to show these changes and the effects they had on the average person. Authors tended to promote this self-evaluation and inquiry through symbolic narratives while using many different viewpoints. Specific characteristics of a traditional modernist work include multiple viewpoints, secondary meanings or allusions, and non-traditional formatting. This break from tradition and the new form of writing style has transformed modern literature as a whole and has produced some of the most well-known writers and poets of our generation.
“I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.” Meaningless is what our postmodern world has become. As a consequence of excessive political correctness and the removal of certainty and discernment, postmodernism has caused the deterioration of the western world and its values. The absolutes of pre-modernism and the traditional logic of modernism are tossed aside for postmodernism’s relative truth and feelings based logic.
Born out of conflict, both modernism and postmodernism were movements that explored the pieces that two global wars had left behind. Modernism focused heavily on the rise of nationalism and capitalism as well as the exploration of individual identity. Some of the more notable literary figures to arise from this period were Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, and Wallace Stevens. Postmodernism, on the other hand, emphasized the rejection of metanarratives, healthy skepticism of universalisms, and the creation of fictional worlds. The influential literary titans from this era include the likes of Kurt Vonnegut, Jorge Luis Borges, and Vladimir Nabokov.
The twenty-first century is developing into a time of technological developments and the beginning of the Modern Era. The early Modern Era was known as a time of exploration and globalization. Globalization is the interconnection of countries; there is an active exchange of commodities, ideas, and philosophical thoughts. With the development in technology such as cell phones, airplanes, Internet, and social media; it has made the growth of transportation and communication networks possible and much more advanced. In other words, people and countries can exchange information, ideas, and goods more quickly and efficiently. The worldwide spread of technology creates vast connections that create new opportunities on a larger scale. One philosophical movement that spread quickly was Modernism. Modernism is a philosophical movement in the arts. The modernists rejected traditional notions of plot and time. In contrast, they would show a rational, cause-effect relationship between events and the character’s development. In this essay I will be demonstrating one of Berolt Brecht "non-Aristotelian drama", a dramatic form intended to be staged with the methods of epic theatre.