Modernism and Post Modernism in Literature

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Modernism and Post Modernism in Literature

• By Maud Start, Georgia Patterson and Zoé Springer

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Modernism

• Modernistic literature is the expression of the
  modern era (1901-45). It tends to revolve around
  themes of individuality, the randomness of life,
  mistrust of government and religion and the
  disbelief in absolute truth.

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Modernism

• Influences of modern literature The three
  thinkers who influence the Modern Era and Modern
  literature the most are probably Charles Darwin
  (1809-1882), Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Sigmund
  Freud.  This is not to say that Modern authors
  were ardent evolutionists, or Marxists or even
  practitioners of Freudian psychology  rather,
  these thinkers simply fuelled and framed the
  perspectives and debates that formulated so much
  Modern art and literature. Today, Freud's
  specific theories are largely dismissed as
  unscientific.  Still, these ideas had a profound
  influence on art and literature as much as on our
  common, daily perceptions/conceptions of
  existence and reality

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Modernism

• Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) was a poet,
  dwelling chiefly on his spiritual relations with
  god, his poetry only became recognized in 1918
  when he became published in Robert Bridges
  edition. The late publication effectively made
  the difficulties of his work anticipate modern
  poetry, and so he made a major influence on later
  writers.

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Modernism

• James Joyce (1882-1941) was an Irish novelist,
  short story novel writer, poet and playwright
  born in Dublin.
• Joyce wrote several volumes and an
  autobiographical novel which follows his life
  from infancy to his first departure for Paris.
  Joyce subsequently wrote an unsuccessful play
  published in 1918 and furthermore a slight volume
  of verses. These were amid the beginnings of his
  two great works to come, Ulysses and Finnegans
  Wake. These both occupied the remainder of his
  life.

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WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

• (13 June 1885- 28 January 1939) 
• William Butler Yeats was one of the foremost
  figures of 20th century literature. In 1923 he
  was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for
  what the Nobel Committee described as "inspired
  poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives
  expression to the spirit of a whole nation."
•  YEATS WAS INTERESTED MAINLY IN THE LIKES OF
• mysticism, spiritualism, occultism and astrology
• In 1916, Yeats quite suddenly decided that he
  didn't want to write pretty poems anymore - he
  wanted to write realistic poems poems as urgent
  and as uncluttered as a newspaper article.He
  even wrote a poem about his decision "A
  Coat".So some characteristics of Modernism in
  Yeats includeDemotic language (not poetic
  language)Political subject matter Ugliness
  and violence, where these are appropriate to the
  subject matter (no attempt to make everything
  aesthetically pleasing in a poeticised vision of
  loveliness).
•  

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CONTRAST IN YEATS POETRY

• MODERNIST Yeats POEM
•  
• THE SECOND COMING
•  
• TURNING and turning in the widening gyreThe
  falcon cannot hear the falconerThings fall
  apart the centre cannot holdMere anarchy is
  loosed upon the world,The blood-dimmed tide is
  loosed, and everywhereThe ceremony of innocence
  is drownedThe best lack all conviction, while
  the worstAre full of passionate intensity

• TRADITIONAL YEATS POEM
•  
• HE WISHES FOR THE CLOTHS OF HEAVEN
•  
• HAD I the heavens' embroidered cloths,Enwrought
  with golden and silver light,The blue and the
  dim and the dark clothsOf night and light and
  the half-light,I would spread the cloths under
  your feetBut I, being poor, have only my
  dreamsI have spread my dreams under your
  feetTread softly because you tread on my
  dreams.
•  

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Modernism

• Virginia Woolf
• During the interwar period, Woolf was a
  significant figure in London literary society and
  a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous
  works include the novels Mrs Dalloway (1925), To
  the Lighthouse (1927) and Orlando (1928), and the
  book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929),
  with its famous dictum, "A woman must have money
  and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."

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POST MODERNISM

• The term Postmodern literature is used to
  describe certain characteristics of postWorld
  War II literature, relying heavily, for example,
  on fragmentation, paradox, questionable
  narrators.
• Unifying features often coincide with
  Jean-François Lyotard's concept of the
  "metanarrative" and "little narrative", Jacques
  Derrida's concept of "play", and Jean
  Baudrillard's "simulacra." For example, instead
  of the modernist quest for meaning in a chaotic
  world, the postmodern author eschews, often
  playfully, the possibility of meaning, and the
  postmodern novel is often a parody of this quest.

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Post Modernism

• Jean Francois Lyotard

Lyotard's work is characterised by a persistent
opposition to universals, he is fiercely critical
of many of the 'universalist' claims of the
Enlightenment, and several of his works serve to
undermine the fundamental principles that
generate these broad claims.
Lyotard was a frequent writer on aesthetic
matters. He was, despite his reputation as a
postmodernist, a great promoter of modernist art.
Lyotard saw 'postmodernism' as a latent tendency
within thought throughout time and not a
narrowly-limited historical period. He favoured
the startling and perplexing works of the high
modernist avant-garde. In them he found a
demonstration of the limits of our conceptuality,
a valuable lesson for anyone too imbued with
Enlightenment confidence. Lyotard has written
extensively also on few contemporary artists of
his choice Valerio Adami, Daniel Buren, Marcel
Duchamp, Bracha Ettinger and Barnett Newman, as
well as on Paul Cézanne and Wassily Kandinsky
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Post Modernism

• Kurt Vonnegut is a well known Post modernist
  author, with his works winning fame after they
  were published in 1969. The classic combines
  science fiction elements with an analysis of
  human condition. The novel is based on Kurt
  Vonnegut's own experience in World War II.
  Slaughterhouse Five treats one of the most
  horrific massacres in European history, the
  firebombing of Dresden.
• Kurt Vonnegut wrote plays, essays and short
  fiction. But it was his novels that became
  classics of the American counterculture, making
  him a literary idol, particularly to students in
  the 1960s and 70s. Dog-eared paperback copies of
  his books could be found in the back pockets of
  blue jeans and in dorm rooms on campuses
  throughout the United States.
• Kurt Vonnegut used humour to tackle the basic
  questions of human existence

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Post Modernism

• Why are we in this world?
• Is there a presiding figure to make sense of all
  this, a god who in the end, despite making people
  suffer, wishes them well?

In 1998, Mr. Vonnegut returned to a former World
War II air-raid shelter in Dresden, Germany,
where he was a prisoner of war. His experience
there was the basis for his novel,
"Slaughterhouse-Five." Kurt Vonnegut not only
wrote metaphysical themes. With a blend of
SCIENCE FICTION, PHILOSOPHY and JOKES, he also
wrote about the banalities of consumer culture,
eg, the destruction of the environment.
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Post Modernism

• Ian McEwan
• Atonement by Ian McEwan employs several
  characteristics of postmodernism in its narrative
  techniques that foreground the conflict between
  differing perceptions of truth and the
  elusiveness of memory.

Recent film adaption starring Kiera Knightly.
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Post Modernism

• Atonement and its Characteristics of
  Postmodernism
• Atonement questions not only authorial authority
  but also the consciousness of the mind, which
  distorts truth and history, and ardently
  illustrates "how easy it was to get everything
  wrong, completely wrong". The structure of the
  narrative foregrounds the conflict between the
  different perceptions of truth, facts and
  beliefs, and truth and illusion, and reflects on
  a smaller scale the similarly written, similarly
  constructed history of the Second World War.

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Post Modernism

• Louis de bernierres
• Postmodernism is hard to define, because it
  is a concept that appears in a wide variety of
  disciplines or areas of study, including art,
  architecture, music, film, literature, sociology,
  communications, fashion, and technology. It's
  hard to locate it temporally or historically,
  because it's not clear exactly when postmodernism
  begins. Perhaps the easiest way to start thinking
  about postmodernism is by thinking about
  modernism. (at the beginning)

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Post Modernism

• Louis de Bernières, who lives in Norfolk,
  published his first novel in 1990 and was
  selected by Granta magazine as one of the twenty
  Best of Young British Novelists in 1993.
• De Bernières' most famous book is his fourth,
  Captain Corelli's Mandolin, in which the hero is
  an Italian soldier who is part of the occupying
  force on a Greek island during the Second World
  War.
• In 2001, the book was turned into a film. De
  Bernières strongly disapproved of the film
  version, commenting, "It would be impossible for
  a parent to be happy about its baby's ears being
  put on backwards." He does however state that it
  has redeeming qualities, and particularly likes
  the soundtrack.