Modernism

Modernism

1. Early 20th century

   • Post World War 1
     • Between wars
   • aprox 1890 - 1950

2. Modernist authors:

   • James Joyce William Faulkner Joseph Conrad Virginia Woolf

3. Modernist poets:

   • T.S Eliot Ezra Pound W.H Auden Robert Frost

4. Characteristics

   • Focus:
     • introspective (inward looking, self analysing)
       • Psychologically and emotionally
     • on the individual and his alienation (isolation) + confusion
   • Radical and revolutionary
     • breaking of the rules
     • shift in paradigma
   • Rythm and fragments of every day language
     • lack of punctuation
       • for character´s thoughts
       • Stream-of-consciousness (narrative device)
     • Experimentation with the structural flow of narrative
   • Heavy use of symbolism and setting
   • Interior monologue

5. Modernistic authors presented

   • a pessimitic picture of society in decay

6. This period marked a loss of faith

   • in God
     • away from organised religion
       • resulted in a greater focus in the individual
   • in the goverment
   • in human goodness

7. "Lost Generation"

   • the social generational group that came of age during World War I. "Traumatic coming of age"
   • "Lost": disoriented spirit of many of the war's survivors in the early postwar period.
     • + being revolutionary
   • group of American expatriate writers living in Paris during the 1920s
     • Ernest Hemingway

8. What led to modernism?

   • The development of industrialised societies
   • The rapid growth of cities
   • The horrors of 2 world WARS
   • Gender, class and race struggles and revolutions