Modernist literature

20th-Century British and Irish
Modernist Literature
A Quick Overview of General
Characteristics, Themes, and Agendas


Historical Background
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1901- The End of the Reign of Queen Victoria
1903- Ford Motor Company Founded
1905- Einstein Unveils the Theory of Special Relativity
1914-18- WWI
1916- Easter Rising in Dublin
1920- League of Nations Formed
1929- Stock Market Crash
1933- Hitler Rises to Power
1939-45- WWII
1945- Atomic Bomb Dropped on Japan
1969- Apollo Lands on the Moon

Who is a “British” Writer in the 20th
Century
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20th-century writers who we call British
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Conrad (Polish)
T.S.Eliot & Pound (Americans)
Yeats & Joyce (Irish)

The British Empire has Stretched Across the Globe


Who is a British Writer in the 20th
Century?
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Writers that were once marginalized by
sexuality, gender, and class were now
celebrated.

W. H. Auden

Virginia Woolf

D. H. Lawrence

Much has Been Brewing in the World
of Science, Philosophy, and Ideology
► Marx

(1818-1883)

 Marx felt that reality was determined by materialist cultures and economics.
He called for a social revolution.

► Darwin

(1809-1882)

 Darwin's theory of evolution and “survival of the fittest” suggests that survival
is determined by the ability to adapt. The Origin of the Species

► Nietzsche

(1844-1900)

 Feels that traditional religions have been debunked by physical and natural
sciences and thus, that moral and ethical systems that arise from traditional
religions are illogical.

► Freud

(1856-1939)

 Freud ‘s theories of the dynamic unconscious suggested that humans are not
fully aware of what they think or why they think it. His ideas proposed that
awareness existed in layers and that many thoughts occur "below the surface.”

► Einstein

(1879-1955)

 Overturns Newtonian conceptions of Physics. The universe is uncertain
and we are ill-equipped observers.


Reed’s Reflections on Modernist
Literature
► Modernist

literature is a movement away
from Romanticism, Victorian trends in
literature, and Realism, and really, is
marked by its determined desire to break
away from all previous forms and
conventions. It reflects the lack of order
seen in a growing urban society, celebrates
passion over reason, and questions
traditional moralities.


Some Formal Characteristics of
Modernist Literature
►Open

and Experimental Form
►Discontinuity
►Juxtaposition
►Intertextuality
►Classical Allusions
►Borrowings From Other Cultures and
Texts


T.S. Eliot
I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
( “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” lines 120-125)


Some Thematic Characteristics of
Modernist Literature
► Alienation

of the individual and the artist
► Society as fractured and culture as fragmented
► Sense of dislocation and meaninglessness
► Questioning the value of cultural norms
► Rejecting recorded history and valuing the mythic
► Focusing on the urban, the mundane, and the

marginalized


James Joyce
I will not serve that in which I no longer believe
whether it call itself home, my fatherland or my
church: and I will try to express myself in some
mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly
as I can, using for my defence the only arms I
allow myself to use, silence, exile, and cunning.
(A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man)