Modernism in Literature
What is Modernism?
Don't confuse Modernism in Literature or the Modernists movement with the standard dictionary definition of modern. Modernism in Literature is not a chronological designation. Modernism in Literature consists of literary work possessing certain loosely defined characteristics. The following characteristics of Modernism answer the question what is Modernism?
Modernism is marked by a strong and intentional break with tradition. This break includes a strong reaction against established religious, political, and social views.
Modernists believe the world is created in the act of perceiving it; that is, the world is what we say it is.
Modernists do not subscribe to absolute truth. All things are relative.
Modernists feel no connection with history or institutions. Their experience is that of alienation, loss, and despair.
Modernists champion the individual and celebrate inner strength.
Modernists believe life is unordered.
Modernists concern themselves with the sub-conscious.
British Modernism
The horrors of World War I (1914-19), with its accompanying atrocities and senselessness became the catalyst for the Modernist movement in literature and art. Modernist authors felt betrayed by the war, believing the institutions in which they were taught to believe had led the civilized world into a bloody conflict. They no longer considered these institutions as reliable means to access the meaning of life, and therefore turned within themselves to discover the answers.
Their antipathy towards traditional institutions found its way into their writing, not just in content, but in form. Popular English Modernists include the following:
James Joyce - His most experimental and famous work, Ulysses, completely abandons generally accepted notions of plot, setting, and characters.
Ford Madox Ford - The Good Soldier examines the negative effect of war.
Virginia Woolf - To the Lighthouse, as well, strays from conventional forms, focusing on Stream of Consciousness.
Stevie Smith - Novel on Yellow Paper parodies conventionality.
Aldous Huxley - Brave New World protests against the dangers and nature of modern society.
D.H. Lawrence - His novels reflected on the dehumanizing effect of modern society.
T.S. Eliot - Although American, Eliot's The Wasteland is associated with London and emphasizes the emptiness of Industrialism.
American Modernism
Known as "The Lost Generation" American writers of the 1920s Brought Modernism to the United States. For writers like Hemingway and Fitzgerald, World War I destroyed the illusion that acting virtuously brought about good. Like their British contemporaries, American Modernists rejected traditional institutions and forms. American Modernists include:
Ernest Hemingway - The Sun Also Rises chronicles the meaningless lives of the Lost Generation. Farewell to Arms narrates the tale of an ambulance driver searching for meaning in WWI.
F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby shows through its protagonist, Jay Gatsby, the corruption of the American Dream.
John Dos Passos, Hart Crane, and Sherwood Anderson are other prominent writers of the period.
Literary Movements
Realism in Literature
Definition of Realism in Literature
A break from Romanticism, Realism is any effort to portray life as it truly is. In the middle of the 19th century, kings and queens, warriors and knights, demonic cats, ghosts, sea creatures, and monsters gave way to farmers, merchants, lawyers, laborers, and bakers. Realism in literature was part of a wider movement in the arts to focus on ordinary people and events
The following Realism writers find themselves oft anthologized in high school and middle school texts:
Ambrose Bierce
Kate Chopin
Stephen Crane
Theodore Dreiser
W.E.B. Dubois
Mary Wilkins Freeman
Hamlin Garland
Henry James
Jack London
Mark Twain
Charles Dickens
Emily Bronte
George Eliot
Oscar Wilde
John Steinbeck
Characteristics of Realistic Fiction
Share the following characteristics of Realistic Fiction to enhance literary knowledge:
Realists take their subject matter from ordinary life. Realists were influenced by the spread of democracy in Europe and North America. Middle and lower class citizens were becoming increasingly important. Detailed settings became important as a means of establishing the realistic nature of main characters and places. Dialect became popular as did an emphasis on local color.
Realists placed an emphasis on characters. As democracy spread, so did the importance of the individual. As individuals became more important in the "real" world, characters became more important in Realist literature. Character, not plot, is the essence of Realism Literature.
Realists conerned themselves with ethical issues. As with all literature, the conflict often involces a moral dilemma faced by one of its participants. In Realism Literature, this dilemma had to be portrayed accurately, honestly, and in detail. Realists avoided preachiness.
American Romanticism
This summary provides basic information on the Romantic Period in American Literature. Help students understand Poe, Hawthorne, Emerson, and Thoreau.
Romanticism in American Literature brought us some of the world's greatest writers. Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Washington Irving and Henry David Thoreau are still studied in classrooms throughout America and in Europe.
Romanticism
Romance describes strange lands and wonderful adventures. It allows the writer greater latitude to include the marvelous with the real. The romance may include the traditional hero with white hat on the white horse; the evil villain with the long black mustache; the lovely young woman in need of rescue, and the hairbreadth rescue itself. Romanticism as a movement began in the late 18th century, moved to England where it developed an emphasis in the glorification of nature, the supernatural, and the rebel—the individual against society. It spread to America in the early to mid 19th century and is represented in such writers as Hawthorne, Poe, and Cooper.
American Romanticism
In the 1830’s, America began to experience the impact of the Romantic Movement that was transforming European civilization. Like the European movement of which it was an offshoot, American Romanticism was in a broad sense a new attitude toward nature, humanity, and society that espoused individualism and freedom. Many trends characterized American Romanticism. Among the most important are the following:
An impulse toward reform (temperance, women’s rights, abolition of slavery)
A celebration of individualism (Emerson, Thoreau)
A reverence for nature (Cooper, Emerson, Thoreau)
A concern with the impact of new technology (locomotive)
An idealization of women
A fascination with death and the supernatural (Hawthorne, Poe)
Important Writers
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882): Self-Reliance
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862): Walden, Civil Disobedience
Washington Irving (1783-1859): The Devil and Tom Walker, Rip Van Winkle Tales
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849): The Pit and the Pendulum, The Masque of the Red Death, The Raven and many many more
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, Doctor Heidegger’s Experiment, Young Goodman Brown
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