MODERNISM

MICHAELA OČKOVÁMONIKA KUZMOVÁ

MODERNISM

This term can be applied to the STYLISTIC CHANGES which took place in literature

Broadly: 1880-1940More narrowly: 1910-1930Modernism can be seen as a literary response to the

disillusionment by the First World War, the loss of religious and political certainties in the late Victorian period

Modernism means a stimultaneous existence of a wide range of structures, movements, tendencies and methods countary to the established literary tradition and convention

The position of men has changed and Modernist literature reflects this fact by many experiments in form and styleModernism was a REACTION AGAINST THE REALIST NOVEL – modern writers believed that literature shouldn’t reflect realityReflects a shift in knowledge and understanding, in sensibility and expression, as the world approaches the twenty-first century"Real" life was a looser, less well-structured affairThey believed that LITERATURE SHOULD BRING SOMETHING NEWNew techniques in narration, experimental novel, innovative techniques in writing

Modernist authors are against rules in literature, they were trying to experiment as much as possibleWriters tried to go deeper to the mind of charactersThey mixed reality and fiction togetherThis period in literature was closely connected with towns, cities and middle class

ICEBERG PRINCIPLE = the majority of main ideas is hidden in the discourse, we have to analyze and go deeper when we want to understand => there is not only 1 explanation of the novel, there can be many of them

Writers felt they had to build up a world of private valuesThe attention is turned to individual’s conscious and unconscious inner lifeThe modernist novel presented readers with “OPEN” ENDINGSLess sense of characters being judged and rewardedThe novel captured MOMENTS /according to Virginia Woolf/ Novels became a succession of unexplained FRAGMENTS OF EXPERIENCE, moments of revelationThe author withdrew as a voice in his/her writings

Writers did not interrupt the text with moralizing comments

A modernist text is APOLITICAL

“It does not exist to preach doctrines, sing songs, or

celebrate the glories of the British Empire” (V. Woolf)

expressing characters’ private FEELINGS

A move away from objectivity towards SUBJECTIVITY

Shifting points of view

The inner life of characters is emphasized

Experiments with traditional categories of time, plot and narrator

New way of writing was developed as an attempt to convey experience as it filtered through the minds of characters: “INTERIOR MONOLOGUE” and “STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS” => writers tried to catch every single idea flowing in the mind, they tried to catch the process of thinking

Difficulties and failures of communication are stressed

Society no longer offers clear goals or models of behavior

STYLE

Style is valued and almost above contentThe writing is polished, highly controlledSyntax is fragmentedConventional narrative signs are missing Novelists used the stylistics of poetry – SYMBOLISM and ALLUSIONS, repetition of imagery and motifs - to structure their text Deforming normal syntax and language codes => texts were artistic objects created from words

THEMES

Solitude and isolation

The difficulties of relationship and communication

Disillusion, disappointment (because of war)

Human’s feelings

Protest against conventions

INFLUENCES

Psychological works of Sigmund FREUD and his research of dreams, fantasies and obsessions which becomes a significant aspect of modern characters

Anthropological writings of Sir James Frazer

Modernism is POST-DARWINIAN /it is a search to explain

mankind’s place in the modern world/

BLOOMSBURY GROUP

Bloomsbury was an informal group of British free-thinking intellectuals at the beginning of 20th century.

They were: writers, artists, scholars, literary critics,

historians, etc.

In the ideas of Bloomsbury group we can find a kind of

revolt against Victorian literature and First World War

MOST FAMOUS MODERNIST WRITERS

James Joyce

Virginia Woolf

David Herbert Lawrence

JAMES JOYCE

“Dubliners”

“A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man”

“Ulysses”

VIRGINIA WOOLF

“To the Lighthouse”

“Mrs. Dalloway”

“Orlando”

“The Waves”

DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE

“Sons and Lovers”

“The Rainbow”

“Lady Chatterley’s lover”

“Woman in Love”

Thank you for your attention