Modernism and Post-Modernism

An OverviewPrepared by Courtney Hanna-McNamaraAdapted from Prentice Hall: The English

Tradition and other sources

Transition from Victorianism to Modernism

• “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold (pp.842-3 in the textbook)– “and bring/ The eternal note of sadness in”

• This is not the optimistic tone of most Victorian works!

– “But now I only hear/ Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar”

• The “golden age of Britain” is retreating and a new age is being ushered in

– Final stanza is critical; depicts the uncertainty of life at the opening of the 20th century

So…what happened next?

• Nothing could have been more obvious to the peoples of the early twentieth century than the rapidity with which war was becoming impossible. And as certainly they did not see it. They did not see it until the atomic bombs burst in their fumbling hands. – H. G. Wells

• The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime. – Sir Edward Grey

• You know only/ a heap of broken images, where the sun beats,/ and the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,/ and the dry stone no sound of water…/ I think we are in the rats’ alley/ Where the dead men lost their bones. – T. S. Eliot

• Make it new. – Ezra Pound

So…what happened next? (cont.)

• Dehumanization of industrialized society• World War I – senseless deaths,

unnecessary war• Political revolutions and upheavals• Uncertain financial times• Collapse of Britain as a world power

(largely due to failed colonized states, rebellion of the Irish, etc.)

• = a general sense of chaos and unrest

“The Second Coming”

• W. B. Yeats, page 1051• “New Historicist” close-read of the poem

• “The falcon cannot hear the falconer”– “old world tactics, new world killing machines”– Senseless violence = the world doesn’t make logical

sense– The natural order of things has been disturbed

• “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold”– Truth no longer exists– They felt there was no ground to stand on

“The Second Coming” cont.

• “The ceremony of innocence is drowned”– Disillusionment: a loss of faith in a previously held belief that is

now known to be false• “The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are full of

passionate intensity”– “the lost generation”

• The soldiers killed in WWI who were filled with a passionate intensity for no good reason

• Those left behind are “lost” because they can no longer find anything to fight for

• “Surely the Second Coming is at hand”– Day of Reckoning for the world– In literature, the literary epiphany: a realization of reality that

comes upon one suddenly and without warning

“The Second Coming” cont.• “A shape with lion body and the head of a man,/ A gaze blank and

pitiless as the sun”– Stream of consciousness: a writing style that mimics the pattern of the

human mind (imitating dream states, or the random thought processes of humans)

• “twenty centuries of stony sleep/ Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle”– Rejection of literary traditions– The old ways are no longer soothing or satisfying – instead, false hope

in a “fairytale ending” creates vexation• “what rough beast, its hour come round at last,/ Slouches towards

Bethlehem to be born?”– “make it new”– Birth of a new, monstrous reality in literature and life– Writers must make their own way in the world and create a literature

that would best reflect their new understanding of the chaotic universe

Who were the Modernists?

• Poets T. S. Eliot, W. B. Yeats, Dylan Thomas

• Novelists Virginia Woolf and James Joyce• Dystopian authors Aldous Huxley, George

Orwell• Some writers continued in the tradition of

Wilde with social satire, though much more pointed in its attack on upper-class society (Waugh, Wodehouse)

How long can they be so depressed?

• Not that long, actually.• After WWII, people realized the chaos

wasn’t going anywhere.• For the first generation, there was truly a

sense of loss about moving from an era of optimism to one of utter despair

• For later generations, they only knew the utter despair – so it didn’t seem quite so bad.

If they stopped pouting, what did they write about instead?

• Post-Modernism• “Embrace the chaos” – if the world is chaotic, we

can’t change that, so we might as well work with it.

• The modernists mourned a loss of truth and logic; the post-modernists encourage a way of thinking about the world that defies definition and categorization

• In fact, they would reject the idea of teaching a lesson on what post-modernism is!

What did these post-modernists write about?

• The ordinary and every day– Stories about ordinary

occurrences – but nothing happens at the end to make it seem like a “plot”

• Politics, religion, strongly-held beliefs– Lots of satire!– Lots of critical thought

about what’s wrong with institutions

What else did they write about?• Pastiche

– The imitation of other art forms, works

– Using lots of different previously known or understood concepts and mashing them together

• Metafiction– Writing about writing– Allusions like you’ve never seen

before (footnotes that take over entire pages, etc.)

– The novel/poem/story/etc. itself as a form becomes analyzed, picked apart, dissected and destroyed in order to say something about what it “means”

– Questions who has control over the text – The author? The audience? Does it matter?

Post-Modern Writers

• Poetry: Philip Larkin, Stevie Smith

• Novels: Salman Rushdie, Jeanette Winterson, Nick Hornby

And what happened after that? What period are we in now?

• Some current writers still use a post-modern style.

• Otherwise, it’s difficult to categorize a period when you’re in it – we’ll have to wait and see what dominant characteristics come out of this time period, which is sometimes referred to as “contemporary” or “post-9/11” literature.

Photo references

• http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/original/seinfeld.jpg

• http://www.mexicanpictures.com/headingeast/images/keith-arnatt.jpg