modernism
In the arts, a general term used to describe the 20th century's conscious attempt to break with the artistic traditions of the 19th century, particularly strong in the period between World War I (1914–18) and World War II (1939–45). Modernism is based on a concern with form and the exploration of technique as opposed to content and narrative. In the visual arts, direct representationalism gave way to abstraction (see abstract art); in literature, writers experimented with alternatives to orthodox sequential storytelling, using techniques involving different viewpoints (such as writing as if in the mind of a character in the story; known as the stream of consciousness technique; in music, the traditional concept of key was challenged by atonality; and in architecture, Functionalism ousted decorativeness as a central objective (see Modern Movement).
Literary modernism
Influences upon literary modernism can be found in European fiction (for example, in the work of French writer Marcel
Proust). In the English language, modernism was centred both in the UK and the USA. Influential modernist writers in the UK include the Anglo-American poet, critic, and playwright T S
Eliot, Irish writer James
Joyce, and English writers D H
Lawrence and Virginia
Woolf. In the USA, the poet and critic Ezra
Pound was an influential modernist, who was especially influential over T S Eliot.
Critics of modernism have found in it an austerity that is seen as dehumanizing. Postmodernism developed as a reaction to modernism, but has had to compete with new and divergent modernist trends, for example high-tech in architecture.
| Eliot was concerned that there was no focus for modern society or literature, and this is explored in his wistful poetry, including ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ (1917) and ‘The Waste Land’ (1922). In his poetry, Eliot combines several different speaking voices and uses the influence of other cultures and literary periods. This technique of parody is an important one for modernists such as Eliot and the Irish writer James Joyce, whose books experiment with frank content and with new ways of narrating, showing the developing linguistic and narrative complexity of the modernist movement. Dubliners (1914), a book of short stories set in Dublin, is the least sophisticated; A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) traces the biographical and linguistic development of a young writer; Ulysses (1922) is a masterpiece of parody and pastiche; and Finnegan's Wake (1939) is the most difficult of Joyce's books, most notably in terms of his experiments with language. |
| D H Lawrence, whose books include Sons and Lovers (1913), The Rainbow (1915), and Women in Love (1921), was innovative in his explicit portrayal of sexuality, and focused mainly on the English lower-middle and working-class. His best-known novel, Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928), was the subject of an obscenity trial, and was not published in England in its complete form until 1960. His short stories and poetry are also important. |
| The Bloomsbury Group, a group of artists and writers focused in the area of London called Bloomsbury, was seen as an avant-garde and modern group. The most famous member was English writer Virginia Woolf. Her work is often described in terms of the modernist ‘stream of consciousness’ technique, which she used to render inner experience. She was also, like many other modernists, concerned with the inadequacy of language to describe experiences; for example, lots of sensations and thoughts can be experienced at any one moment, but only one can be described in words at any one moment. These are major themes of her books, which include Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and The Waves (1931). |
modernism
| In Protestantism, liberal thought which emerged early in the 20th century and attempted to reconsider Christian beliefs in the light of modern scientific theories and historical methods, without abandoning the essential doctrines. It was against modernism that the Fundamentalist movement defined itself. The term was originally used for liberal tendencies in the Roman Catholic Church. Modernism was condemned by Pope Pius X in 1907. |
