Modernism and the 20th Century 12

The Twentieth Century + Modernism

• Modernism spans three periods: High Modernism (1920s), Late Modernism (1930s-1950s), and Postmodernism (1960s-??).
• High Modernism involved figures like Eliot, Joyce, Woolf, and Yeats.
• Modernism reflects a loss of foundational Western values, including religion, humanism, progress, and faith in language.
• Modernist authors used personal mythmaking, often autobiographical, reflecting the historical context.
• Modernist literature captures the complexity of life through innovative forms, open endings, and extensive use of imagery, metaphors, and symbols.
• A typical Modernist character is a lonely individual wandering through the world.
• The Edwardian period influenced Modernism with its focus on aestheticism.
• Literary market diversification occurred, increasing readership.
• World War I (1914-1918) shattered the idea of progress and spurred new ideas.
• Cities gained prominence while psychoanalysis emerged through figures like Freud, Nietzsche, Planck, and Einstein.

Virginia Woolf – Modern Fiction

• Virginia Woolf was a literary critic, essayist, and novelist who focused on the position of women in literature.
• Woolf and her husband, Leonard Woolf, ran the Hogarth Press.
• Woolf was a member of the Bloomsbury Group, which explored the artistic possibilities of Modernism.
• Literary Modernism included poetry, shorter novels, short stories, and professional literary criticism.
• Modernism saw an inward turn of narrative, employing stream of consciousness and free indirect speech.
• A Room of One’s Own discusses the requirements for women to write, imagining Shakespeare's sister.
• Modern Fiction (1919/1925) critiques Edwardian fiction's focus on the physical ("the body") over the spiritual ("the spirit").
• Woolf criticizes trivialities but contradicts herself, noting writers are still bound by literary principles.

Mrs. Dalloway – 1925

• Mrs. Dalloway is set in London and uses two parallel plotlines featuring Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Warren Smith.
• The novel uses a cubist effect by contrasting the two protagonists.
• Mrs. Dalloway employs free indirect speech and stream of consciousness narration.
• Cubism in literature involves contrasting different minds
• Free indirect speech incorporates a character's language and subjectivity without explicit introduction or shifts in pronouns and tense.
• Stream of consciousness narration represents the continuous flow of perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and memories in the mind.
• Woolf believed Edwardian authors were too perfect, and literature requires "cracks" to let life in.

W.B. Yeats – Easter 1916 / The Second Coming

• W.B. Yeats won the Nobel Prize in 1923 and drew on Irish folklore and history for his work.
• Yeats' style evolved, influenced by his belief in magic, the occult, and theosophy.
• Yeats used personal mythmaking to create meaning due to a perceived loss of religion.
• "Easter 1916" addresses the Easter Rising of 1916, where Irish republicans rebelled against British rule in Dublin.
• The poem is an occasional poem engaging with a contemporary event.
• The poem shifts from personal reflections to universal themes, showing respect and rejection, and ends with an attempt at impartiality.
• The poem uses repetition, resembling a lullaby.

The Second Coming – 1920/21

• "The Second Coming" describes a world where "things fall apart; the centre cannot hold," using the metaphor of a gyre.
• History is presented as a system of gyres in contrast with each other.
• The poem has an apocalyptic tone, emphasizing uncertainty and change.
• Humans lose control over their environment.
• Instead of Jesus, a mysterious entity comes to save the world.

T.S. Eliot – The Waste Land

• T.S. Eliot was a poet, critic, editor, and Nobel laureate (1948).
• His essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent" (1919) advocates understanding poetry through tradition and analogy to science.
• Eliot emphasized the importance of tradition for writers to achieve modernity.
• Eliot compared the poet's mind to a catalyst in a chemical reaction, combining elements from tradition.

The Waste Land – 1922

• The Waste Land alludes to Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales.
• The Waste Land explores brokenness, isolation, and generational trauma after the war.
• The "waste land" is a metaphor for modern society without values.
• The poem references the idea of rebirth.
• The poem is experimental in form, using free verse and fragmented structure incorporating dialogue.

James Joyce – Araby - 1914

• James Joyce was an Irish cosmopolitan novelist known for controversial subjects and innovative narrative forms.
• Dubliners was published in 1914.
• "Araby" features autobiographical details of a boy going to a market to buy something for a girl.
• The story is a coming-of-age tale with an unreliable narrator.
• The protagonist experiences a moment of realization and epiphany.
• The story has Catholic connotations, such as the boy attending Catholic school and his view of romance as a replacement for religion.
• The story shows a broader sense of loss of values and narratives.
• While based on a heroic quest, the story ends with frustration instead of fulfillment.
• Religion lacks meaning, and the bazaar symbolizes imperialism.
• The story features fragmentary experiences of reality.
• Modernist literature reflects reality, embracing realism.