Modern Western literature commenced from the 1890s. The high modernism began after the First World War. The architect Sir Edwin Lutyen visited the battlefields of north-eastern France in July 1917 in order to investigate the need for permanent memories to the vast number of dead. The post-war period was haunted by long memories, tender, angry, and sickening. Sir Lutyen says that poppies, cornflowers, skylarks and rats of the poetry had emerged from the war that effectively marked the end of an art which had once reached far comfortably to sympathetic images from nature.
New feelings started in politics, society and in art and literature after the First World War and its immediate aftermath. Virginia Woolf expressed this in 1924, “This is an accumulated sense of exhilaration at a variety of new beginnings and rejections of the past.” She refers to Samuel Butler’s The Way of All Flesh as an early symptom of cultural questioning and the plays of Shaw. Her paper “Mr. Bennet and Mrs. Brown” would probably have acknowledged the potent influence of the wider European innovations.
In 1910, there was an exhibition in London of the blazing colours and visual fragmentations of Cezanne, Van Gogh, and Gauguin organized by Roger Fry and the post-impressionists. The second exhibition in 1912 introduced the visual economics, the rethinking of form and the abstractions of Matisse, Picasso, Braque and Derain to the London public. It included English imitators Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell and Russian artists. Diaghilev’s company organized an exhibition of Russian art works. This influenced European arts. It directed challenges to the vaunted refinement and urbanity of inherited aristocratic Western culture and to the emasculated nature of much of its old-tradition.
Table of Contents
1. Literary Modernism and English Fiction
1.1 Literary Trends and Concepts
1.2 Modernism in Literature
1.2.1 Modernism in Poetry
1.2.2 Modernism in Drama
1.2.3 Modernism in Fiction
1.2.4 Modernism and Visual Art
1.2.5 Modernism and Film
1.2.6 The Metaphysics of Modernism
1.2.7 The Cultural Economy of Modernism
1.2.8 Modernism and the Politics of Culture
1.2.9 Modernism and Gender
Objectives and Themes
The primary objective of this work is to provide a comprehensive exploration of Literary Modernism, tracing its origins, defining movements, and analyzing its profound impact on English fiction and broader cultural expressions in the 20th century. The central research concern is to investigate how modernist writers and artists challenged traditional representational modes and negotiated a new, self-conscious relationship with reality, history, and individual subjectivity.
- The evolution of literary modernism from the 1890s through the post-war era.
- Key philosophical and artistic movements, including Cubism, Existentialism, Surrealism, and Symbolism.
- The impact of technological and societal changes on modern narrative techniques and aesthetics.
- The intersection of modernism with political developments, gender studies, and psychological theories.
Excerpt from the Book
Modernism and the Politics of Culture
Modernism was notoriously inhospitable to define. There was relation of art to politics. Modernism stands in relation to form of power. It has been praised for its richness in negotiating historically new form of experience. It spreads all over the political map of the twentieth century Western Europe, and America. It makes political broadcasts for Mussolini, militating against the Ku Klux Klan, modernism arguing for free speech and free verse. W.H. Auden sums up common literary historical wisdom in the administration that “Art is not life and cannot be a midwife to society.” Modernist texts, writers and institutions not only reflect but they turn to contribute to social experience, shaping ideals, assist militarist, right-wing movement, progressive labor feminism, and racial struggle. Modernism involves in political activity both on the right and the left, with an eye toward the range of commitments exercised under the banner of art, culture and literacy.
Modernism had flirtation and fascination with militarism, xenophobia racism and anti-Semitism, Pound, Eliot, Lewis and many furthered modernism. Pound’s Cantos and T.S. Eliot’s pronouncements on Christian order and Christian society are vital. Number of works made modernism’s alliances with an extreme political activity.
Summary of Chapters
Literary Modernism and English Fiction: This chapter provides an introduction to the commencement of modern Western literature and the onset of high modernism following the First World War.
Literary Trends and Concepts: This section delineates the core intellectual and artistic movements that defined the modernist era, such as Cubism, Dadaism, Existentialism, and Impressionism.
Modernism in Literature: This chapter analyzes how modernist sensibilities shaped various literary expressions, including poetry, drama, and fiction, while exploring themes like gender, metaphysics, and political culture.
Keywords
Modernism, English Fiction, Cubism, Existentialism, Stream of Consciousness, Surrealism, Symbolism, Modernity, Feminism, Political Culture, Narrative Technique, Psychology, Aesthetics, Avant-garde, Literary Criticism
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the core focus of this publication?
The work examines the rise of literary modernism as an intellectual movement, tracking its development across various genres and its role in questioning traditional 19th-century certainties.
Which specific artistic and intellectual movements are discussed?
The book covers a broad spectrum of movements including, but not limited to, Cubism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Expressionism, Imagism, and Existentialism.
What is the central research question addressed in this text?
It seeks to understand how modernist writers and artists utilized new forms and techniques to represent a world characterized by existential instability, rapid technological change, and political upheaval.
What methodologies are employed to analyze the subject?
The text employs a multidisciplinary historical and critical approach, integrating literary analysis with insights from politics, psychology, anthropology, and philosophy to explain the "modernist revolution."
What does the main body of the work cover?
The main body systematically reviews the evolution of modernism in poetry, drama, and fiction, while dedicating significant space to the movement's relationship with visual art, film, and social structures.
Which keywords best describe this study?
Key terms include Modernism, Aestheticism, Avant-garde, Narrative Technique, Existentialism, and the political influence on cultural expression.
How did Modernism impact the traditional structure of drama?
The work discusses how modern dramatists, such as Strindberg and Brecht, moved away from conventional naturalism toward expressionist techniques and symbolic representations of inner reality.
What is the significance of the "Stream of Consciousness" technique?
It is identified as a critical narrative tool used in 20th-century fiction to represent the continuous, often disjointed flow of thoughts and sense perceptions in the human mind, transcending traditional sentence structures.
How does the book connect Modernism to the political landscape of the 1920s and 1930s?
The text illustrates that modernism was not isolated from reality but was deeply entwined with the political, social, and economic tensions of the time, including the rise of fascism and leftist political movements.
- Quote paper
- Bs English Fayaz khan (Author), 2020, Literary modernism and English fiction, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/955791
