Thematic Concern in Modernist Literature
The modernist literature or literary modernism traces its origin in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It has its roots mainly in North America and Europe. It is characterized by various authors from various genres of literature with a self-conscious break with the conventional way of writing in prose, plays, and poetry. The major modernist works of Samuel Beckett’s, “Waiting for Godot,” poem by T. S. Eliot “The Waste Land,” the novel “Mrs. Dalloway” by Virginia Woolf and “The Cannibalist Manifesto” by Oswald de Andrade, could present various themes that characterize the modernist literature including the absurd, alienation, and dislocation in society as it was seen and felt by the authors
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These techniques were used to explore the suddenly messy, fragmentary nature of modern life. Most of the modernist writers wrestled with the sense that some aspects of human society were lost with the loss of traditional values. Therefore, much of literature and art produced during this time included a sensation of searching which is the reason modernists are referred to as “the lost generation.” The play “Waiting for Godot” features two characters waiting for someone named Godot who never arrived. As they wait, they engage in various discussions where the reader encounters three more characters (Beckett). In the poem “The Waste Land,” features the speaker who wanders around a barren scene, attempting to reassemble the ruins into some plain meaning. The novel “Mrs. Dalloway” represents a stream of thoughts, detailing a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, who is a high-society woman in a post-World War I England (Woolf). “The Cannibalist Manisfesto” is to be thought of an essay that was written by Oswald de Andrade, describing how Brazil must devour other countries and cultures in order to stand as one and not be dominated by others. The theme of absurd is seen in the play “Waiting for Godot.” The Absurd in this play appears as man 's response to the world apparently without importance, as well as man as a manikin controlled or menaced by invisible outside strengths (Hussain 1479). Despite the fact that the term is connected
Modernists proclaimed about a complete separation from realistic traditions that took place in the 19th century and decided to put an emphasis on Impressionism, Perspectivism and Subjectivity in their literary works. The main idea of Modernism is that emphasis was put on how we see rather what we perceive. Our own understanding and perception of event is even more important than an event of itself. The Modernists present the inner world of hero in the first place. How the consciousness and the subconsciousness are interacting, and how our actions and decisions are made
The Norton Anthology of American Literature defines and explains American Modernism through a historical lens and further emphasizes the significant social changes of the era. The American Modernist era is situated between two world wars and a devastating economic depression. The anthology describes these impactful events as a catalyst for social, political, technological, and philosophical change. America lost a sense of identity and entered into a quest to find meaning in all aspects of life.
Modernist themes can be seen all throughout American Literature beginning in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The idea that the traditional values of old were no longer relevant in a modernizing, industrialized world were prevalent in modernist writings. The modernist writers felt as if something inside of them had been lost. They were constantly asking the question “what am I supposed to believe in now”? As if they felt this void inside of them that they could not seem to fill. Many of these writers saw life as fragments lying on the ground waiting for someone to come along and make sense of them, but it seems as if no one ever did for them. They began to have a negative outlook on life which reflected in their work. Works such as
People were searching for restoration in the aftershock of World War II. The modernists in this period were trying to find a way to resuscitate themselves in a tragic environment. There was a viewpoint that the individual had to discover a new style of connecting to humanity in a different way.
Many people think of the future and dream up their idea of a utopian society, and in the time in which Modernism was prevalent, this utopia was mainly depicted as and achieved through technological advancement and knowledge. Not considered one single style, Modernism encompasses various movements and styles, which tended to reject history and embrace the abstract. Those who considered themselves Modernists and incorporated Modernism ideas in their works tended to be in search of a utopian society due to their desire to create a better world. Certain Modernists also deemed that technology and its development were the primary ways in which society could improve itself. In his work “Twilight,” John W. Campbell applies these modernism ideals; however, he seems to challenge many Modernists’ thinking by mocking certain major aspects of their stylistic beliefs.
The modernist movement is a time where the enlightenment ideas are rejected and replaced by truth and reality. The modernist writers began to use things such as ambiguity, alienation, fragmentation, and estrangement in their works to shock or surprise the reader. Many of the modernist works try to show readers that they cannot know every meaning of a word that is put on paper or if what is happening is real or fake. These concepts are reasons why the modernist movement became so important to this time period. The modernist made it so that one would question reason, truth, and reality leaving one unsure of what was happening.
In its general definition, the concept of Modernism means a radical shift in aesthetic and cultural sensibilities evident in the art and literature of the post-World War I period. Therefore, in literature, modernism appears to break with Victorian bourgeois morality and rejects the optimism prevailing that era. Modernist writing is
expected to work day in and day out, in order to keep up the organised
The Twentieth Century found literature with a considerably different attitude and frame-of-mind than had the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Two hundred years is, of course, a long time to allow change within genres, but after the fairly gradual progression of the novel as a form, its change in the hands of modernism happened rapidly in comparison. Explaining how texts within the framework of modernist writing are “different” require laying out from what they are different, how, and why. A direct cause of, and coinciding with, literature’s abruptly changing face was the Industrial Revolution and its subsequent
This will be the second element discussed. The literal definition would be explained and what is also means in terms of modernist literature and what roles writers have, in conjunction with this element I will also include artistic-experimentation and how that helped modernist culture. I will also refer to cubism and surrealism and why it affected literary writers as many visual artists.
Ezra Pound was one of the most famous and influential figures in the Modernist literature movement. “Make it new” was his philosophy and the rallying cry for Modernist literature. Whilst the Modernists tried to capture the new by a “persistent experimentalism", it rejected the traditional (Victorian and Edwardian) framework of narrative, description, and rational exposition in poetry and prose” . Modernist literature not only rejected the old in terms of form, but also in subject matter- Modernism began to focus more on the self, on the internal dialogue. Whilst Post-Modernism is much harder to define, one thing that is prolific in Postmodern literature is the re-working and imitation of the past in the form of parody and pastiche. What I find interesting is that whilst Modernist were driven by the desire to create something new, they were mostly benighted traditionalists that were reacting to the change around them. The Postmodernists however, were not lamenting change but using literature in a way that hoped to stimulate it. I am going to look at this with a specific focus on The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot and The Crying Lot of 49 by Thomas Pynchon.
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
In Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and V.S. Naipaul’s The Mystic Masseur, the concept of modernism is established through two supporting characters, both of which have only brief physical interactions with our protagonists. Kurtz, from Heart of Darkness, and Mr. Stewart, from The Mystic Masseur, both represent the idea of modernism through both their beliefs and their actions, in a time when modernism was finding its footprints and was viewed differently to those foreign to the movement. Although these novels take place in very different locations, they take place during a similar time period; the early 20th century. The modernist movement “flourished between 1900 and 1930” and emphasized the idea of deviating from the norm, including the rejection of religious principles, artistic freedom, and looking beneath the surface of man to find where our creative energy comes from, to reinvent how it can be utilized. Both Kurtz and Mr. Stewart may have been deemed as outsiders in their respective stories, but we begin to see their modernistic values and how they come to affect their respective novels over the course of time.
Breaking rules and traditions, and living aimlessly are the two main characteristics of the two periods of time from modern to post-modern, between the late 19th century and the late of 20th century. According to “Modernism & Modernist Literature: Introduction and Background” article, that the expression ‘modernism’ in general “covers the creative output of artists and thinkers who saw ‘traditional’ approaches to the arts, architecture, literature, religion, social organization had become outdated in light of the new economic, social and political circumstances of a by now fully industrialized society”(1). People in those period of time lived a chaos world,
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