by Francesco Bernardini

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by Francesco Bernardini
Modernism
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Definition

• Modernism is a literal and artistic movemente
  that developed in Europe in the first three
  decades of XX century.
• Its name describes the epoque in which it
  developed, that is the end of the Modern age

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Cultural Background

• Modernism took start between the end of the XIX
  century and the beginning of the XX century
• In that period all traditional beliefs were put
  in doubt by scientific discoveries (evolution
  theory, theory of relativity)
• In society the general inkling was a sense of
  confusion and absence of points of reference and
  authorities

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Objective

• The main objective of Modernism was to create a
  new way of expression in which the absence of
  authority and points of reference, and the idea
  of a changing world was expressed and traditional
  beliefs were turned upside down
• It also created a new connection between past
  literature and myths and contemporary literature
  by transcodifiction

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Main Features

• Modernist works are the most complex works in the
  history of literature
• Modernism was an elitarian movement since it was
  so difficult, it couldnt be understood by
  ordinaty people because it requested a vaste
  culture to be read
• Modernist artists used very particular devices to
  convey better feelings, emotions and ideas it
  also described a new conception of time

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Literal Devices

• Shift of the point of view
• Dramatic monologue
• Speaking voice
• Interior monologue
• Stream of consciousness
• Intertextuality

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Conceptual Devices

• Anthropology
• Objective correlative
• Anti-hero
• Mythical method
• Transcodification
• Importance of mankind

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Representative Writers
Poetry Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965) USA -
UK Ezra Pound (1885-1972) USA - UK
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
IRL Novel James Joyce (1882-1941) IRL
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) UK Franz
Kafka (1883-1924) CS
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Representative Works

• James Joyce Ulysses 1922, Finnegans Wake
  1939, The dubliners1914
• Virginia Woolf To the lighthouse1927, Mrs
  Dalloway1925
• T.S.Eliot The love song of J.Alfred
  Prufrock1915, The wasteland 1922, The four
  quartets1936-1942
• Franz Kafka The metamorphosis 1915