Modernism

Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance

​Definition

• ​Modernism is a literary and cultural international movement which flourished in the first four decades of the 20th century.

• It reflects a sense of cultural crisis which was both exciting and disquieting, in that it opened up a whole new vista of human possibilities at the same time as putting into question any previously accepted means of grounding and evaluating new ideas.

• Modernism is marked by experimentation, particularly manipulation of form, and by the realization that knowledge is not absolute.

​General Features

​Modernism was built on a sense of lost community and civilization and was made up of a series of contradictions , embraced multiple features of modern sensibility

• Revolution and conservatism

• Loss of a sense of tradition

• Increasing dominance of technology

Thematic Features​

• ​Intentional distortion of shapes

• Focus on form rather than meaning

• Breakdown of social norms and cultural values

• Dislocation of meaning and sense from its normal context  Disillusionment

  Rejection of history and the substitution of a mythical past

• Need to reflect the complexity of modern urban life

• Importance of the unconscious mind

• Interest in the primitive and non-western cultures

• Impossibility of an absolute interpretation of reality

• Overwhelming technological changes

Multiple Choice

Modernist literature reflects a sense of

• cultural crisis

• cultural revolution

• Happiness

• generosity

Multiple Choice

Modernists writing features

• Loss of tradition

• revolution and conservatism

• Increased technology

• A, b, and c

​Literary Characteristics

• "a general term applied retrospectively to the wide range of experimental & avant-garde trends in the literature (and other arts) of the early 20th century....

• characterized chiefly by a rejection of 19th century traditions and of their consensus between author and reader: realism ... or traditional meter.

• Modernist writers tended to see themselves as an avant-garde, disengaged from bourgeois values, and disturbed their readers by adopting complex and difficult new forms and styles.

• Modernist writing is predominantly cosmopolitan, and often expresses a sense of urban cultural dislocation, along with an awareness of new anthropological and psychological theories. Its favored techniques of juxtaposition and multiple point of view challenge the reader to reestablish a coherence of meaning from fragmentary forms."

​Stream of Consciousness

• Aims to provide a textual equivalent to the stream of a fictional character’s consciousness

• Creates the impression that the reader is eavesdropping on the flow of conscious experience in the character’s mind

• Comes in a variety of stylistic forms

• Narrated stream of consciousness often composed of different sentence types including free indirect style

• characterized by associative (and at times dissociative) leaps in syntax and punctuation

​Interior Monologue

• ​A particular kind of stream of consciousness writing

• Also called quoted stream of consciousness, presents characters’ thought streams exclusively in the form of silent inner speech, as a stream of verbalised thoughts

  Represents characters speaking silently to themselves and quotes their inner speech, often without speech marks

• Is presented in the first person and in the present tense and employs deictic words

• also attempts to mimic the unstructured free flow of thought

• can be found in the context of third-person narration and dialogue

Multiple Choice

Modernist writers included what features in their writing?

• Stream of consciousness and inner monologues

• Streams and rivers

• Outer monologues

• None of these are featured

​Modernist Authors

• ​T.S. Elliot

• ​Langston Hughes

• ​Robert Frost

• ​F. Scott Fitzgerald

• Virginia Woolf

• ​Arthur Miller