Modernism

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Modernism
Magonara Luca Alvise
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What was it?

• Modernism was a literary movement developed
  during 1900 and 1930 and reached its height with
  authors such as
• T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway,
  Virginia Woolf, W.B. Yeats, F. Scott Fitzgerald,
  Ezra Pound, D.H. Lawrence, H.D. and Mikhail
  Bulgakov.

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What was its historical background?

• Its historical background of Modernism was split
  in two notorious periods at the end of "The long
  nineteenth century" and at the beginning of "The
  short twentieth century".

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What was its historical background?

• The Great depression it caused an enormous
  unemployment rate and loss of faith in liberal
  democracy.

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What was its historical background?

• Wars First World War shocked a whole generation
  and confirmed the Victorian doubts and fears.
  Moreover changed completely the positivist idea
  of progress.

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What was its historical background?

• Darwinism The human beings lost their central
  position in the universe and concepts such as
  unconscious influenced artistic currents (e.g.
  steam of conscious and Surrealism)?

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What were its literary features?

• Modernism was considered an emancipated movement,
  because it broke with Realistic and Romantic
  literature introducing new features such as

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What were its literary features?

• Parody of mundane a prime example being "The
  Love Song of J.Alfred Prufock" by T.S.Eliot.
• In the room the women come and go
• Talking of Michelangelo.

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What were its literary features?

• The absence of a heroic figure there is a
  recognition that people are fraught with human
  frailties e.g. T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land.

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What were its literary features?

• ..and much more
• Disjointed timelines
• No omniscient narrator
• Eclipse of the narrator
• Shifting point of view
• No more framework of reference
• Flux of thought
• Elitarian movement
• Objective correlative
• Mythical method

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What about its form?

• Focusing on modernist form we can notice
  particular features
• The plot is reduced to minimum (e.g. Joyce's
  Ulysses)?
• Individual side and subjectivity (e.g. Joyce's
  Leopold Bloom)?
• Internal monologue and personal search (e.g.
  Eliot'sPrufrock)?