Modernist Principles:

“Make it New”

English 255

American Literary Modernism



Modernism, according to Christ Baldick,
The Concise Oxford Definition of
Literary Terms is “a general term
applied retrospectively to the wide
range of experimental and avant-garde
trends in the literature (and other arts)
of the early 20th century”

“…a movement which began … in the closing

years of the 19

th

century and which … had a

wide influence internationally during much of
the 20

th

century. [It] reveals a breaking away

from established rules, traditions and
conventions, fresh ways of looking at man’s
position and function in the universe and
many…experiments in form and style. It is
particularly concerned with language and how
to use it … and with writing itself.”

The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary

Theory, 4th Ed. (1998) by J.A. Cuddar



“…the term ‘Modernism’ is not a precise
label but instead a way of referring to the
efforts of many individuals across the
arts who tried to move away from
established modes [realistic] of
representation”

Peter Childs, Modernism

Scientific Rationalism



During 19

th

Century, the Enlightenment

notion of the world as a machine—
something whose parts could be named and
seen to function—came back into favor.



Positivism—the 19

th

Century belief that

everything, including human nature, could
be explained and understood through
science.



Modernism rejects this idea.

Modernist writing reacts to several changes during

the first part of the twentieth century:



industrialization and mechanization



rapid technological advances



What important changes happened?

An Ugly War



WW I was the first “total war”

in which modern weapons

spared no one, including

civilians.



The casualties suffered by the

participants in World War I

dwarfed those of previous

wars: some 8,500,000

soldiers died as a result of

wounds and/or disease.



War was increasingly

mechanized from 1914 and

produced casualties even

when nothing important was

happening.

Civilians



It has been estimated that the number of civilian

deaths attributable to the war was higher than the

military casualties, or around 13,000,000. These civilian

deaths were largely caused by starvation, exposure,

disease, military encounters, and massacres.



The enormity of the war had undermined humankind's

faith in Western society and culture.

–

A generation of young men lost.

–

Survivors reexamine bases of certainly, structure of

knowledge, systems of belief and authorities.

–

Creating a feeling of hopelessness.



Postwar modernist literature reflected a sense of

disillusionment and fragmentation.

Karl Marx



Marx’s new
explanations of
history—dialectical
materialism which
sees historical
progress as the
political struggle
between two classes
resulting in a new
socioeconomic order

Charles Darwin



Darwin’s new view of
humanity as
ascended from apes
rather than
descended from God
— shifts humanity’s
conception of its
place in the world

Ferdinand de Saussure



Swiss linguist who
argues that
language is relative,
that words have no
direct relationship to
the concepts or
objects they signify

Albert Einstein



Theory of relativity

abandoned the concepts

of absolute motion and

the absolute difference of

space and time.



Theories became

interpreted in popular

culture that we cannot

know anything for sure;

all knowledge is relative.



Einstein: his philosophies

of relativity challenge

previous scientific notions

of stable time and space

Friedrich Nietzsche



Nietzsche: when he
said “God is Dead”
and argued for the
power of the human
will, he shifted
cultural ideologies
about religion and
philosophy

Sigmund Freud



Stressed subconscious

motives and instinctual

drives.



After Freud, impossible to

ignore psychological

undercurrents of human

behaviors.



Writers deal with

subconscious motivations.



Employ stream of

consciousness technique

similar to Freud’s

therapeutic tactic of free

association.

Alternate spiritualities and

religions



The Golden Bough



From Ritual to Romance



Theosophy



Golden Dawn

Expressionism



Refused direct
representation of
reality.



Favor of expressing an
inner vision, emotion,
or spiritual reality.



The Scream by Edvard
Munch evokes a whole
realm of spiritual
agony.

Surrealism



Aim to bring a fuller
awareness of human
experience—both
conscious and
unconscious states.

Key Descriptors



decentered



pessimistic



disaffected



a “literature in crisis”



loss and despair



violence and alienation



race relations



historical discontinuity



decadence and decay



rejection of history



unavoidable change

Things Modernist Writing Does



Elevation of art over

everything else (morality,
money, middle-class values)



Avant garde—alienated from

social reality

Things Modernist Writing

Does



Characterized chiefly by a rejection of

19th-century traditions reader:

conventions of realism ... or traditional

meter.



Predominantly cosmopolitan



Expresses a sense of urban cultural

dislocation



Represents psychological time, the

stream of consciousness

Things Modernist Writing

Does



“Make it New”



Art is unique and original, is anti-commercial



It explores the human subconscious (think
Freud)



Relies on and employs myth as a reaction
against scientific rationalism, uses
sensuality, intuition and a search for “Truth”

Things Modernist Writing

Does



Time is circular rather than linear



Feels human character can only be

known through memories and thoughts

versus external description



Reacts against Realism and Victorian

morality, find sexuality and sexual

desire as a subject



Modernism is disenchanted

Forms of Modernist Writing



Experiments with point of view and
narrative structure.



Rejection of chronological and narrative
continuity.



Literature and language as a game



Stream of consciousness



Unreliable narrator

Forms of Modernist Writing



Uses fragments, a non-linear plot



Juxtaposition and multiple point of view



Psychological realism—seeks to
represent the character’s thoughts,
feelings, and memories, his or her
consciousness



‘Objective correlative‘--Eliot



"No ideas but in things," Williams

Modernism’s Mission



Literature = art object produced by consummate
craft rather than as a statement of emotion.



Not a set of stylistic features; an impulse to perfect



A refusal of clichés; a system of taboos



A reaction against degraded Realism, especially in
the marketplace



A repudiation of monopoly capitalism’s effects on
human being (conformity, standardization,
repetition, seriality, stupidity)