Modernism in literature, with its theoretical framework.

1. Modernism
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2. The Oxford English Dictionary identifies
“modernism” as the portmanteau term for
“(a)ny of the various movements in art,
architecture, literature, etc., generally
characterized by a break with classical and
traditional forms or methods of expression.”

3. Modernism was that earthquake in the arts
which brought down much of the structure of
pre-twentieth century practice in music,
painting, literature, and architecture.

4. One of the major epicentres of this earthquake seems
to have been Vienna (1890-1910), but the effects were
felt in France, Germany, Italy, and eventually in
Britain, in art movements like Cubism, Dadaism,
Surrealism, and Futurism.

5. Girl with Mandolin,
cubist painting by
Pablo Picasso

6. Dadaism made
use of collage,
photomontage,
assemblage,
and other
techniques...

7. Surrealism was a 20th
Century avant-garde
movement in art and
literature which sought to
release the creative
potential of the
unconscious mind, for
example by the irrational
juxtaposition of images.

8. Futurism was an early
20th Century artistic
movement centred in Italy
that emphasized the
dynamism, speed, energy,
and power of machine and
the vitality, change, and
restlessness of modern
life.

9. Modernism: Melody and harmony were put
aside in music; perspective and direct pictorial
representation were abandoned in painting, in
favor of degrees of abstraction; in architecture
traditional forms and materials (pitched roofs,
domes and columns, wood, stone, and bricks)
were rejected in favor of plain geometric
forms, often executed in new materials like
plate glass and concrete; and in literature,
there was a rejection of traditional realism, in
favor of experimental forms....

10. High Modernism
(1910-1930)

11. T. S. Eliot

12. James Joyce

13. Ezra Pound

14. Wyndham Lewis

15. Virginia Woolf

16. Wallace
Stevens

17. Gertrude Stein

18. Marcel Proust

19. Stephane Mallarme

20. Andre Gide

21. Franz Kafka

22. Rainer Maria
Rilke

23. Characteristics of
Literary Modernism

24. 1. A new emphasis on impressionism and
subjectivity, that is, on how we see rather
than what we see (eg., stream-of-
consciousness technique)

25. 2. A movement (in novels) away from the
apparent objectivity provided by such features
as: omniscient external narration, fixed
narrative points of view and clear-cut moral
positions.

26. 3. A blurring of the distinctions
between genres, so that novels tend
to become more lyrical and poetic,
for instance, and poems more
documentary and prose-like.

27. 4. A new liking for fragmented forms,
discontinuous narrative, and
random-seeming collages of
disparate materials.

28. 5. A tendency towards ‘reflexivity’, so
that poems, plays, and novels raise
issues concerning their own nature,
status, and role.