The document discusses the key differences between realism and modernism. Realism emphasized absolutism and a single observable reality, while modernism argued that people construct their own meanings. It then outlines some of the major changes between the pre-modern and modern world, including a loss of order, meaning, and morality. Modernist writers and artists felt alienated from Victorian values and used experimental styles and techniques to challenge conventions and readers' expectations.

2.  Whereas REALISM
 Emphasized
absolutism, and
 single reality through
the observation of
nature
 MODERNISM
 Argued for cultural
relativism,
 people make their
own meaning in the
world.

3. Pre-Modern World Modern World (Early 20th
Century)
Ordered Chaotic
Meaningful Futile
Optimistic Pessimistic
Stable Fluctuating
Faith Loss of faith
Morality/Values Collapse of Morality/Values
Clear Sense of Identity Confused Sense of Identity
and Place in the World

4.  Literally  outside of “civilized” English
enclave in medieval Dublin
 Metaphorically  standing outside of
conventional boundaries (law, behavior, class,
gender, etc.)
 Symbolically  literary modernism—art
going beyond boundaries of thought, style,
propriety, genre, etc.

5.  Outsiders (Irish, immigrants, expatriates,
exiles): Joyce, Eliot, Lawrence,Conrad
 Sense of alienation and outcast status from
mainstream, middle-class,
lateVictorian British values—
more doubt creeps in

6.  Death ofVictoria, ineffective Edwardianism,
outbreak ofWorld War I
 Warfare: WMDs, killing from distance and from air,
shell shock, 8% of British population killed or
wounded
 Psychology: understanding and accepting that not
all minds are ‘normal’ and that all identities are
constructed—we are ALL counterfeiting.
 Science: increasing evidence of evolution, new
physics, “uncertainty principle,” “relativity”
 Religion: old answers don’t seem to fit new and
uncertain times. Nietzche: “God is dead.”

7.  “Make it new!”
 “Make it different!”
 “Make it difficult!”

8.  Resentment at close-mindedness and
complacency of lateVictorian culture
 Increasing fragmentation and insecurities lead
to cynicism and distrust of “pat” solutions—
doubts no longer resolved by faith
 Nature replaced with the impersonalism of
cities, the sterility of wastelands…
 Sense that the “givens” are no longer good, that
the moorings have been eroded away
 Imagist poetry instead ofVictorian
expansiveness
 “The Second Coming” instead of “Ulysses”

9.  Emergence of vers libre (free verse) to replace
prescribed metric forms
 Attack on and dismantling ofVictorian
literary proprieties: language, sex, form, even
typography
 “Anxiety of influence”—effect of tradition on
individual writers, trying to get out from
under the perceived weight of the past

10.  Sense that “intellectual” literature had to be
different from that which pleased the masses
 Bring in anthropology, mythology, psychology,
science—challenge readers’ knowledge and
expectations
 “Stream of consciousness”—attempts to
recreate the thinking of characters in works, to
find a literary equivalent for how minds work

11.  The sense that our culture has no center, no
values.
 Paradigm shift
 from the closed, finite, measurable, cause-and-
effect universe of the 19th century
 to an open, relativistic, changing, strange
universe;

12.  Literature Exhibits Perspectivism
 Meaning  the individual’s perspective

13.  Inner psychological reality or “interiority” is
represented
oStream of consciousness—portraying the
character’s inner monologue

14.  Perception of language changes:
 No longer seen as transparent, allowing us to
“see through” to reality;
 But now considered the way an individual
constructs reality;
 Language is “thick” with multiple meanings
and varied connotative forces.

15.  Emphasis on the Experimental
 Art is artifact rather than reality;
 Organized non-sequentially
▪ Experience portrayed as layered, allusive,
discontinuous, using fragmentation and
juxtaposition.
 Ambiguous endings—open endings which are
seen as more representative of reality.

16.  Cubism—1909-1911
 Art in which multiple views are presented
simultaneously in flattened, geometric way.

18.  Dadaism –deliberately irrational
 a protest against the barbarism of theWar and
oppressive intellectual rigidity;
 Anti-art
▪ Strives to have no meaning
▪ Interpretation dependent entirely on the
viewer;
▪ Intentionally offends.

19. Duchamp

20.  Surrealism
 Grew out of Dada and automatism.
 Reveals the unconscious mind in dream
images, the irrational, and the fantastic,
 Impossible combinations of objects depicted
in realistic detail.

21. Dali Magritte

22. Jackson Pollock

23.  Futurism—grew out of Cubism.
 Added implied motion to the shifting planes and
multiple observation points of the Cubists;
 Celebrated natural as well as mechanical motion
and speed.
 Glorified danger, war, and the machine

24. Giacomo BallaKandinsky