The History of Modernist Literature

It seems every few decades the literary ground shifts. Romanticism and Realism dominated the latter 18th century well into the 19th century. Next came Modernism, arising in the 1900s. Soon after, postmodernism took stage in the 1950s. Now into the 2000s, authors have performed remarkable feats of literary creativity and diversity. Authors are evoking occurrences from the turn of the millennium—events and conflicts that are specific to the twenty-first century. The new forms, tropes and theoretical strategies in current literature have got literary critics asking: is there such thing as twenty-first-century fiction—a new type of novel that separates itself from the modernist and postmodernist novel in terms of themes, styles, and characteristics? This paper reviews ten scholarly sources that argue for and show examples of the emergence of the new literary movement of this century. This literature review can be used by scholars interested in the next step in literature theory and how it is being defined and debated among philosophers and critics.

The first characteristic associated with modernism is nihilism, the rejection of all religious and moral principles as the only means of obtaining social progress. In  other words, the modernists rejected the morals of the society in which they were living in. The reason that they did so was because there was a great majority of them who didn’t believe in the existance of god, or

The literary modernism time period was a movement in literature that started in the early 1890s and was very eventful. During this era there were many considerable events taking place such as The Great War (also known as “World War One”), which started in 1914. This War lasted for four years and finally ended in 1918, but its effects lasted much longer. The financial instability of Europe and death caused by this First World War gave people a sense of patriotism that unified them. It made people think of not only the society as a whole, but themselves as individuals ("Modernism."). This new individualist mindset made people think more about their thoughts and actions than they had ever previously done before. Because individuals thought

American literature 1865-1914 is an American literary time period that began in 1865 and ended in 1914. This time period was flourished by three distinct features and the first of these features is: The Aftermath of the Civil War. It is estimated that a total of 620,000 Americans were killed in the Civil War, and for what? At the time, we were an America that was divided by one huge issue that ran supreme and it was slavery and the unequal treatment of African Americans. At this time the nation needed to figure a way to unite the North who were against slavery and the South who were for slavery. As Abraham Lincoln says in our Bedford Anthology of American Literature: “No one man has authority to give up the rebellion for any other man, we simply must begin with, and mould from, disorganized and discordant elements,” (4). He is saying that we must not start a new, but rather we need to start from what we had and mould and shape our country into one. Prior to the Civil War, America was not a whole, it was ruled by states’ rights and was divided on countless issues, and when referring to America, people said the United States are… It wasn’t until under President Lincoln, and concluding the Civil War that the United States began to be referred to as the United States is.. Honest Abe, brought our nation together as one, but the racial tension that remained was something one man can never fix. The literature around this time period was dominated by ideas and feelings circled

sex and drugs) are not enough to satisfy the wants and desires of some citizens (Bernard, especially)

History and literature. History clearly reflects in literature; it is a pattern often seen in English 11. Five obvious examples of history reflecting in literature are the works of the Colonial Period, Enlightenment, Romanticism, and Late 19th Century Lit.

Modernism brought a new era to fiction as a whole. With World War One raging distress and fear to people worldwide, the modernists as a whole were very angry. They were angry with the propaganda of the time telling them that war was good; those who’d seen the battlefield knew better. They despised their didactic Victorian predecessors, who taught clear divisions between right and wrong. Modernists instead believed that authority figures were corrupt and that morality is often unclear. This comes to light especially within the poems of Eliot and Yeats, and especially in the modernist manifesto Blast.

Going from long skirts and traditions the youth are beginning to radically change our culture creating controversy. This era is where many of our traditions that have never been questioned before are being put to the limits by our growing youth. We used to be a culture of women covering up, planned dates, horses and buggies and everyone attending church. The war is over and everything is changing, so the real question we must ask is, is it actually bad? First of all planned dating and seeming improper to mingle between the sexes is old and does not allow the youth to choose the right person that they want to spend the rest of their life with. Women throughout creation have always been forced to cover up and seem ‘ladylike’ but now the youth are showing that women have the freedom to act as they please. Finally, religion has always been something everyone believes but now with the new theory of evolution we should allow people to choose for themselves what they want. Therefore the youth are not merely destroying our

The time period that my group and I worked on was the modern time period. This time period was 1914-1950. There was a lot of major events that influenced this time period. Some of those were The Great Depression which occurred in 1929-1939, World War I and World War II. The Enlightenment was another huge event that happened during this time. All of these events occurred during this time and influenced the writing during the modern period. A lot of important people wrote many important pieces of literature. During this time, there was many different values and beliefs. The modern time period wasn’t just a type of literature, it was a movement. It was really a great incline of the youth culture. The type of writing that is has is mostly

59. modernism- the movement that is currently in effect. Suzanne Collins is an example of a

Following the rapid technological and urban growth of the early twentieth century as well as the disillusionment caused by World War I, Modernism arose in an attempt to better explain the new, ever-changing world. Modernist literature revolves around several principles, including stylistic minimalism, fragmentation, perspectivism, and symbolism. Ernest Hemingway, a significant American Modernist, employs all of these principles in his collection of short stories In Our Time. Throughout many of these short stories, a recurring character Nick Adams matures, from the innocent young boy of "Indian Camp" to the adult veteran having returned from war in "Big Two Hearted-River." As the concluding story of Ernest Hemingway's In Our Time, "Big Two Hearted

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.’’ Everyone has their own personal fears but despite the differences in what we fear, we all collectively share one thing. The fear. The dread. And the uncertainty. Even long after the great war was long ended, there was always a sense of uncertainty amongst the people. Doubt and distrust of what is to come feeling betrayed by the governments that overpowered them. This lead to the Modernism Movement, a movement entirely powered by the fear of a next war, driven by the innermost feeling of uncertainty and doubt. The Modernist movement, occurring between the 1920’s and 1960’s, attempted to change existing perceptions of reality as well as undermine and disregard grand narratives such as religion

Thomas Pynchon was born on May 8, 1937. He studied engineering physics and English at Cornell University before taking a job as an engineering aide with the aircraft manufacturer Boeing in 1960. The Crying of Lot 49, his second novel, was published in 1966 amid America’s counterculture movement. The novel’s protagonist, Oedipa, attempts to reinstall some sense of order to her life and to the increasingly disordered American mainstream by doggedly pursuing a conspiracy. Her efforts ultimately prove futile, as America, and by extension the universe, continues to careen towards its fate—a state of complete chaos.

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

Modernism, in literature, can be seen as a shift in focus to the unassociated introspective reflection of characters in such texts as Go Tell It On The Mountain, by James Baldwin, Miss Lonelyhearts, by Nathanael West and The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger. This is a revision from the previous focal point of exterior events and places in correlation with the character’s reflections. Emphasis is placed on review upon feelings and thoughts, and even conversations with oneself, as opposed to the more directly event-driven reflections in texts of the pre-modernist era.