Modernism and Post Modernism in Literature

7/29/2019 Modernism and Post Modernism in Literature

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Modernism and Post Modernism in Literature

By Maud Start, Georgia Patterson

and Zo Springer


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Modernism

Modernistic literature is the expression of

the modern era (1901-45). It tends to revolve

around themes of individuality, the

randomness of life, mistrust of government

and religion and the disbelief in absolute

truth.


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Modernism

Influences of modern literature The three thinkers who influence theModern Era and Modern literature the most are probably Charles Darwin(1809-1882), Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Sigmund Freud. This is not to say

that Modern authors were ardent evolutionists, or Marxists or evenpractitioners of Freudian psychology; rather, these thinkers simply fuelled

and framed the perspectives and debates that formulated so muchModern art and literature. Today, Freud's specific theories are largely

dismissed as unscientific. Still, these ideas had a profound influence on artand literatureas much as on our common, daily perceptions/conceptions

of existence and reality:


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Modernism

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) was apoet, dwelling chiefly on his spiritual relations

with god, his poetry only became recognized

in 1918 when he became published in RobertBridges edition. The late publication

effectively made the difficulties of his work

anticipate modern poetry, and so he made a

major influence on later writers.


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Modernism

James Joyce (1882-1941) was an Irish novelist, shortstory novel writer, poet and playwright born in

Dublin.

Joyce wrote several volumes and an autobiographicalnovel which follows his life from infancy to his firstdeparture for Paris. Joyce subsequently wrote an

unsuccessful play published in 1918 and furthermorea slight volume of verses. These were amid the

beginnings of his two great works to come, Ulyssesand Finnegans Wake. These both occupied the

remainder of his life.


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WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

(13 June 1885- 28 January 1939)William Butler Yeats was one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. In 1923 he was

awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for what the Nobel Committee described as "inspired

poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation."

YEATS WAS INTERESTED MAINLY IN THE LIKES OF:mysticism, spiritualism, occultism and astrology

In 1916, Yeats quite suddenly decided that he didn't want to write pretty poems anymore - hewanted to write realistic poems: poems as urgent and as uncluttered as a newspaper article.

He even wrote a poem about his decision: "A Coat".

So some characteristics of Modernism in Yeats include:

Demotic language (not poetic language)

Political subject matter

Ugliness and violence, where these are appropriate to the subject matter (no attempt to

make everything aesthetically pleasing in a poeticised vision of loveliness).


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CONTRAST IN YEATS POETRY

TRADITIONAL YEATS POEM:

HE WISHES FOR THE CLOTHS OF HEAVEN

HAD I the heavens' embroidered cloths,Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark clothsOf night and light and the half-light,I would spread the cloths under your feet:But I, being poor, have only my dreams;I have spread my dreams under your feet;Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

MODERNIST Yeats POEM:

THE SECOND COMING

TURNING and turning in the widening gyreThe falcon cannot hear the falconer;Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, andeverywhereThe ceremony of innocence is drowned;The best lack all conviction, while the worstAre full of passionate intensity
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Modernism

Virginia Woolf

During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society

and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include the

novels Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) and Orlando (1928), and thebook-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929), with its famous dictum, "A

woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."
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POST MODERNISM

The term Postmodern literature is used to describe certaincharacteristics of postWorld War II literature, relyingheavily, for example, on fragmentation, paradox,

questionable narrators.

Unifying features often coincide with Jean-Franois Lyotard'sconcept of the "metanarrative" and "little narrative",Jacques Derrida's concept of"play", and Jean Baudrillard's"simulacra." For example, instead of the modernist quest

for meaning in a chaotic world, the postmodern author

eschews, often playfully, the possibility of meaning, and thepostmodern novel is often a parody of this quest.


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Post Modernism

Jean Francois Lyotard

Lyotard's work is characterised by a persistent opposition to universals, he is

fiercely critical of many of the 'universalist' claims of the Enlightenment, and

several of his works serve to undermine the fundamental principles thatgenerate these broad claims.

Lyotard was a frequent writer on aesthetic matters. He was, despite his

reputation as a postmodernist, a great promoter of modernist art. Lyotard

saw 'postmodernism' as a latent tendency within thought throughout time

and not a narrowly-limited historical period. He favoured the startling andperplexing works of the high modernist avant-garde. In them he found a

demonstration of the limits of our conceptuality, a valuable lesson for anyone

too imbued with Enlightenment confidence. Lyotard has written extensively

also on few contemporary artists of his choice: Valerio Adami, Daniel Buren,

Marcel Duchamp, Bracha Ettinger and Barnett Newman, as well as on Paul

Czanne and Wassily Kandinsky
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/46/Jean-Francois_Lyotard_cropped.jpg


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Post Modernism

Kurt Vonnegut is a well known Post modernist author, with his works winning fame after they werepublished in 1969. The classic combines science fiction elements with an analysis of human condition. Thenovel is based on Kurt Vonnegut's own experience in World War II. Slaughterhouse Five treats one of the

most horrific massacres in European history, the firebombing of Dresden.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote plays, essays and short fiction. But it was his novels that became classics of theAmerican counterculture, making him a literary idol, particularly to students in the 1960s and 70s. Dog-eared paperback copies of his books could be found in the back pockets of blue jeans and in dorm rooms

on campuses throughout the United States.

Kurt Vonnegut used humour to tackle the basic questions of human existence:


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Post Modernism

Why are we in this world?

Is there a presiding figure to make sense of all this, a god who in the end,

despite making people suffer, wishes them well?

In 1998, Mr. Vonnegut

returned to a former World War II

air-raid shelter in Dresden, Germany,

where he was a prisoner of war.

His experience there was the basis

for his novel, "Slaughterhouse-Five."

Kurt Vonnegut not only wrote metaphysical themes.

With a blend ofSCIENCE FICTION, PHILOSOPHY

andJOKES, he also wrote about the banalities of consumer culture, eg,

the destruction of the environment.


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Post Modernism

Ian McEwanAtonement by Ian McEwan employs several characteristics of postmodernism in its

narrative techniques that foreground the conflict between differing perceptions of

truth and the elusiveness of memory.

Recent film adaption starring Kiera Knightly.


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Post Modernism

Atonement and its Characteristics ofPostmodernism

Atonement questions not only authorial authority

but also the consciousness of the mind, which distortstruth and history, and ardently illustrates "how easyit was to get everything wrong, completely wrong".The structure of the narrative foregrounds theconflict between the different perceptions of truth,facts and beliefs, and truth and illusion, and reflectson a smaller scale the similarly written, similarlyconstructed history of the Second World War.


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Post Modernism

Louis de bernierres

Postmodernism is hard to define, because it is a concept that appears in a wide

variety of disciplines or areas of study, including art, architecture, music, film,

literature, sociology, communications, fashion, and technology. It's hard to locateit temporally or historically, because it's not clear exactly when postmodernism

begins. Perhaps the easiest way to start thinking about postmodernism is by

thinking about modernism. (at the beginning)


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Post Modernism

Louis de Bernires, who lives in Norfolk, published his first novel in 1990 andwas selected by Granta magazine as one of the twenty Best of Young

British Novelists in 1993.

De Bernires' most famous book is his fourth, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, inwhich the hero is an Italian soldier who is part of the occupying force on aGreek island during the Second World War.

In 2001, the book was turned into a film. De Bernires strongly disapprovedof the film version, commenting, "It would be impossible for a

parent to be happy about its baby's ears being put onbackwards." He does however state that it has redeeming qualities,

and particularly likes the soundtrack.

Documents

Modernism and Post Modernism in Literature