Value differences in the Modern world

Pre-Modern World Modern World (Early 20

th

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

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 MODERNISM

General features
On or about December 1910 human nature changed. The great modernist writer
Virginia Woolf wrote this in her essay Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown in 1924. All
human relations shifted, Woolf continued, and when human relations change
there is at the same time a change in religion, conduct, politics, and literature.
Modernism is a word that refers to the changes that affected art, technology,
philosophy and human behaviour.
Modernism is a response by clusters of intellectuals and artists to the converging
processes of industrialization. (Robert Wohl)
Modernism reflects a loss of faith in traditional values and beliefs (including the
American Dream for the Americans).
Artistic/literary movement: it influenced painting first; (Impressionism and Cub-
ism are forms of Modernism)
Traditional" forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, social organization
and daily life became outdated,
Post World-War One: Post-WWI: chaos & destruction, Excess of violence, The
devastation of World War I brought about an end to the sense of optimism that
characterized the years leading up to the war,
This more negative, or realistic, view of the world, and the technological advances,
gave birth to Modernism
Modernism rejected Positivism: the 19th Century belief that everything, including
human nature, could be explained and understood through science.
Pessimistic picture of culture in disarray
Modern poets goal = rid poetry of 19th century prettiness & sentimentality
Rejected 19th century optimism
Move from the bonds of Realist literature
Introduce concepts such as disjointed timelines
Distinguished by emancipatory metanarrative
A comprehensive explanation of historical experience or knowledge

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 An explanation for everything that happens in a society
Move away from Romanticism
Absence of a central, heroic figure
Collapsing narrative and narrator into a collection of disjointed fragments and
overlapping voices

A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF THE INTELLECTUAL CURRENTS WHICH INFLUENCED

MODERNISM
Karl Marx (1818-1883): Marx felt that reality was determined by materialist cultures
and economics. He called for a social revolution. He sees historical progress as the
political struggle between two classes resulting in a new socioeconomic order.
Charles 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 defines his new view of humanity as ascended from apes rather than
descended from God shifts humanitys conception of its place in the world.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900): When he said God is Dead and argued for the
power of the human will, he shifted cultural ideologies about religion and philosophy.
He 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.
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939): Freuds 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. He stressed subconscious motives and instinctual drives, so writers deal
with subconscious motivations. They employ stream of consciousness technique
similar to Freuds therapeutic tactic of free association
Albert Einstein (1879-1955): Overturns Newtonian conceptions of Physics. The
universe is uncertain and we are ill-equipped observers:
Theory of relativity abandoned the concepts of absolute motion and the
absolute difference of space and time.

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 Theories became interpreted in popular culture that we cannot know
anything for sure; all knowledge is relative.
His philosophies of relativity challenge previous scientific notions of stable
time and space
Ferdinand De Saussure: Swiss linguist who argues that language is relative, that
words have no direct relationship to the concepts or objects they signify.

Literary features
High degree of experimentation : Experiments with point of view and
narrative structure.
Characters most often alienated people searching unsuccessfully for meaning
and love in their lives. Disillusionment : A feeling arising from the discovery
something is not what it was anticipated to be, more severe and traumatic
than common disappointment, especially when a belief central to one's
identity is shown to be false.
Themes pulled from real life
Predominantly cosmopolitan
Represents psychological time, the stream of consciousness eg: Virginia
Woolf: Mrs Dalloway , James Joyce: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man +
Ulysses
Stream of consciousness
A literary technique
Portraying an individual's point of view, meaning comes from the
individuals perspective and is personalized
By giving the written equivalent of the character's thought processes:
Either in a loose internal interior monologue Or in connection to his or
her sensory reactions to external ocurrences
A special form of interior monologue Characterized by: Associative
(and at times dissociative) leaps in syntax and punctuation, making the

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 prose difficult to follow, tracing a character's fragmentary thoughts
and sensory feelings
Distinguished from dramatic monologue: The speaker is addressing an
audience or a third person, used chiefly in poetry or drama

Relies on and employs myth as a reaction against scientific rationalism, uses

sensuality, intuition and a search for Truth
Human character can only be known through memories and thoughts versus
external description
Reacts against Realism and Victorian morality, finds sexuality and sexual
desire as a subject
Rejection of chronological and narrative continuity.
Unreliable narrator
Uses fragments, a non-linear plot
Juxtaposition and multiple point of view: A single story might be told from the
perspective of several different people, with the assumption that the truth
is somewhere in the middle - relativism

Psychological realismseeks to represent the characters thoughts, feelings,

and memories, his or her consciousness
Borrowings from other cultures and languages

Free Verse

o Vers libre

o Styles of poetry that are not written using strict meter or rhyme

o Still recognizable as 'poetry' by virtue of complex patterns of one sort

or another that readers will peive to be part of a coherent whole

Intertextuality

o Coined by poststructuralist Julia Kristeva in 1966, eg. Conrads Heart of

Darkness with Coleridges The Rime of an Ancient Mariner

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 o Shaping texts' meanings by other texts

o Authors borrowing and transformation of a prior text

o Readers referencing of one text in reading another

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, (called
also the Language Games by Wittigenstein
Ambiguous endingsopen endings which are seen as more representative of reality

Modernism in America
What is the American dream and How it relates to American literature ?

[The American dream is] that dream of a land in which life should be better and
richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or
achievement.
--coined in 1931 by J.T. Adams in The Epic of America
The notion that the American social, economic, and political system makes success
possible for every individual
The ideals of freedom, equality, and opportunity traditionally held to be available to
every American
A life of personal happiness and material comfort as traditionally sought by
individuals in the U.S.
3 central ideas :
1. admiration for America as a new Eden, a land of beauty, bounty, and unlimited
promise.
2. optimism a belief in progresslife keeps getting better and moving toward an era
of prosperity, justice, and joy that always SEEMS just around the corner.
3. The importance and ultimate triumph of the individualthe independent, self-
reliant person.

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 What was going on 1914-1945?
World War I: The Great War (US joined in 1917)
The Roaring Twenties
The Great Depression
The New Deal
World War II
The factors leading Americans to distrust the American Dream : all damaged the
tenets of the American dream
World War I & disillusionment,
-Increase in industrialization,
-Unfair labor practices,
-Excessive drinking