Modernism emerged in response to major social, political, and intellectual changes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These included the loss of religious belief, rise of science and technology, growth of mass culture, and changing gender roles. Major influences included Darwin, Marx, Freud, and Einstein. The generation that came of age during World War 1 felt disconnected from traditional values and sought new ways to find meaning. Modernist works emphasize individual perspectives and subjective experiences over rational order. They use experimental styles and indirect techniques to challenge social conformity. A key modernist theme is the quest for personal artistic ordering in a world seen as unstable and alienating.

1. (Literary) Modernism:
A Very Brief Introduction
Gerald R. Lucas

2. “Shall I at least set my lands in order?”
—T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land, 1922

3. Modernity
• Loss of belief in religion
• Rise of dependence on science/
mechanization
• Expansion of commodification
• Growth of mass culture
• Changing relations between the sexes

4. Major Figures
• Darwin (1859)
• Marx (1867)
• Freud (1890s ff.)
• Einstein (1901)
• Heisenberg (1927)

5. The “Lost Generation”
• Is ravaged by World War 1
• Loses a stable, intellectual framework
• Is separated from inherited values
• Attempts to find meaning within
• Sees reality as unstable, provisional, and alien
• Must relearn how to live

6. “These fragments I have shored against my ruins.”
—T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land, 1922

7. (Literary) Modernism
• Emerges from and responds to earlier traditions
in art
• Emphasizes the individual, the relative, the
subjective
• Looks to the self for artistic ordering - quest
• Uses unfamiliarity, the indirect, and the allusive
• Challenges rational order and social conformity

8. The modern character becomes “a
perfect instrument for registering the
variety, the flux, the interpenetration,
the simultaneity and randomness of
experience” (C. Butler 64)

9. Hemingway
• Psychological realism
• Novel as code
• Grace under pressure
• Heroic journey
• 1. Innocence
• 2. Trap - tragedy occurs
• 3. Rise out and discover how to live

10. Resources
• Butler, Christopher. Modernism: A Very Short
Introduction. Oxford UP, 2010.
• Calinescu, Matei. Five Faces of Modernity.
Duke UP, 1987.
• Images from John Hillcoat’s The Road.