Modernism

T.S. Eliot and The Waste Land

What is Modernism?
Romance In medieval literature, a verse narrative recounts the marvellous adventures of a chivalric hero. In modern literature (from the later 18th through 19th centuries) a romance is a work of prose fiction in which the scenes and incidents are more or less removed from common life and are surrounded by a halo of mystery, an atmosphere of strangeness and adventure.

 Realism A mode of writing that gives the impression of recording or reflecting faithfully an actual way of life. The term refers, sometimes confusingly, both to a literary method based on detailed accuracy of description (verisimilitude) and to a more general attitude that rejects idealization, escapism, and other extravagant qualities of romance in favour of recognizing soberly the actual problems of life.

A Rather Unhelpful Definition of Modernism

Modernism Modern art is, in most critical usage, reckoned to be the art of what Harold Rosenburg calls the tradition of the new. It is experimental, formally complex, elliptical, contains elements of decreation as well as creation, and tends to associate notions of the artists freedom from realism, materialism, traditional genre and form, with notions of cultural disaster.

We can dispute when it starts (French symbolism, decadence, the break-up of naturalism) and whether it has ended (Kermode distinguishes paleo-modernism and neo-modernism and hence and degree of continuity to post-war art). We can regard it as a timebound concept (say 1890 to 1930) or a timeless one (including Sterne, Donne, Villon, Ronsard).

The best focus remains a body of major writers (James, Conrad, Proust, Mann, Gide, Kafka, Svevo, Joyce, Musil, Faulkner in fiction; Strindberg, Pirandello, Wedekind, Brecht in drama; Mallarm, Yeats, Eliot, Pound, Rilke, Apollinaire, Stevens in poetry) whose works are aesthetically radical, contain striking technical innovation, emphasize spatial or fugal as opposed to chronological form, tend towards ironic modes, and involve a certain dehumanization of art.

Perhaps a more useful definition

If we take the 1890 starting point we can say the modernist literature is a break (in part) from realism and a return (in part) to romanticism. The works of the early period were often utopian in theme and drew on the vast changes in science, art and culture. After the First World War (1919) modernist writing remained experimental but often engaged in a more pessimistic style of realism, a pessimism caused by finding out what the impact of these earlier changes would mean for the world and its people.

 Or this one from Wikipedia

Modernist literature is sub-genre of Modernism, a predominantly European movement beginning in the early 20th century that was characterized by a selfconscious break with traditional aesthetic forms. Representing the radical shift in cultural sensibilities surrounding World War I, modernist literature struggled with the new realm of subject matter brought about by an increasingly industrialized and globalized world. In its earliest incarnations, modernism fostered a utopian spirit, stimulated by innovations happening in the fields of anthropology, psychology, philosophy, political theory, and psychoanalysis. Writers such as Ezra Pound and other poets of the Imagist movement characterized this exuberant spirit, rejecting the sentiment and discursiveness typical of Romanticism and Victorian literature for poetry that instead favored precision of imagery and clear, sharp language. This new idealism ended, however, with the outbreak of war, when writers began to generate more cynical postwar works that reflected a prevailing sense of disillusionment and fragmented thought. Many modernist writers shared a mistrust of institutions of power such as government and religion, and rejected the notion of absolute truths. Like T.S. Eliot's masterpiece, The Waste Land, later modernist works were increasingly self-aware, introspective, and often embraced the unconscious fears of a darker humanity.

Statements about Modernism and Modernist Literature

The deepest problems of modern life derive from the claim of the individual to preserve and protect the autonomy and individuality of his existence in the face of overwhelming social forces, of historical heritage, of external culture, and of the technique of life. Georg Simmel Art in its execution and direction is dependent on the time in which it lives, and artists are creatures of their epoch. The highest art will be that which in its conscious content presents the thousandfold problems of the day, the art which has been visibly shattered by the explosions of last week... The best and most extraordinary artists will be those who every hour snatch the tatters of their bodies out of the frenzied cataract of life, who, with bleeding hands and hearts, hold fast to the intelligence of their time. - Richard Huelsenbeck "First German Dada Manifesto" of 1918 In using the myth, in manipulating a continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity, Mr. Joyce is pursuing a method which others must pursue after him... It is simply a way of controlling, of ordering, of giving a shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history. T.S. Eliot on Ulysses

Modernism as a Historical period

La Belle poque 1800s to WWI Fin de sicle 1890s to 1910s Victorian Era 1830 - 1900 Edwardian Era 1900 - 1920 George VI and the First World War/Interwar Period up to 1939? Can we put an end date on Modernism conclusively?

Modernism in Design, Art, and Architecture

Art Nouveau 1890s 1910s (final death of neoclassicism) Art Deco (Bauhaus) 1920s to WWII International Style 1920s/30s 1970s As we can see modernism(s) is an overlapping set of styles difficult to unfold.

Modernism In Art
Avant-garde Impressionism 1870s and 1880s (Monet, Renoir, Degas) Expressionism 1900s (Munch, Kandinsky) Futurism, Cubism, and Dada 1900 1920 and Beyond Surrealism (Dali) 1920s Abstract Expressionism (Pollock) 1940s

The Little Magazine

Published in small numbers (The editor of the Smart Set claimed it was written for the 400 the only people in America who understood literature) Often short lived or handed from editor to editor for revival Many of the same group, including Eliot, worked on the magazines, giving them both a unified tone and a limited audience open to the ideas of the writers in question.

Some Little Magazines

The Yellow Book (London 1894 1897) Athenaeum (London 1828 1921) The Adelphi (London 1923 1955) The Criterion (London 1922 1939) *published The Wasteland The Egoist (London 1914 1919) The Smart Set (New York 1900 1930) Transatlantic Review (Paris 1924)

High vs Low Modernism

Periodization High Modernism can be seen as occurring between 1914 and 1945 As a cultural framework High Modernism can be seen as distant from the populace at large art for itself and the understanding that nothing is truly knowable Critically - Can be seen as the dividing line between Mass Culture and Art with a capital A

T.S. Eliot
Born September 26 1888 St. Louis MO USA Died January 4 1965 London UK Father businessman, Mother a poet and social worker he was the last of six children Limited by physical disability he delved into literature

 Educated in St. Louis and in Massachusetts he moved on to Harvard to study Philosophy, getting a BA in 1909 Worked as an assistant at Harvard for a year before moving to Paris to study Philosophy at the Sorbonne 1911-1914 when he moved to Oxford instead of Germany due to the outbreak of WWI (he did not serve) He hated the town of Oxford and spent much time in London where he met Ezra Pound he completed his Ph.D. in 1916 but did not defend.

 Married Vivienne Haigh-Wood in 1915 moving to London where he taught both in University and High School he also took a job in a bank, writing book reviews on the side. In 1925 he became an editor at Faber and Faber. He became a British Subject in 1927 While he was working some of his poetry was published but he also became and accomplished Literary Critic

Eliots Poetry
Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock (1915) The Waste Land (1922) The Hollow Men (1925) Four Quartets (1943) led to his winning Nobel Prize Eliot was not a prolific writer, unlike others we have discussed, he struggled to make the poetry he did write have the most profound impact on those who read it.