20th-Century British and Irish Modernist Literature

1
20th-Century British and Irish Modernist
Literature

• A Quick Overview of General Characteristics,
  Themes, and Agendas

2
Historical Background

• 1901- The End of the Reign of Queen Victoria
• 1903- Ford Motor Company Founded
• 1905- Einstein Unveils the Theory of Special
  Relativity
• 1914-18- WWI
• 1916- Easter Rising in Dublin
• 1920- League of Nations Formed
• 1929- Stock Market Crash
• 1933- Hitler Rises to Power
• 1939-45- WWII
• 1945- Atomic Bomb Dropped on Japan
• 1969- Apollo Lands on the Moon

3
Who is a British Writer in the 20th Century

• 20th-century writers who we call British
• Conrad (Polish)
• T.S.Eliot Pound (Americans)
• Yeats Joyce (Irish)

The British Empire has Stretched Across the Globe
4
Who is a British Writer in the 20th Century?

• Writers that were once marginalized by
  sexuality, gender, and class were now celebrated.

D. H. Lawrence
Virginia Woolf
W. H. Auden
5
Much has Been Brewing in the World of Science,
Philosophy, and Ideology

• Marx (1818-1883)
• Marx felt that reality was determined by
  materialist cultures and economics.
• He called for a social revolution.
• Darwin (1809-1882)
• Darwin's theory of evolution and survival of the
  fittest suggests that survival
• is determined by the ability to adapt. The
  Origin of the Species
• Nietzsche (1844-1900)
• Feels that traditional religions have been
  debunked by physical and natural
• sciences and thus, that moral and ethical
  systems that arise from traditional
• religions are illogical.
• Freud (1856-1939)
• Freud s theories of the dynamic unconscious
  suggested that humans are not
• fully aware of what they think or why they think
  it. His ideas proposed that
• awareness existed in layers and that many
  thoughts occur "below the surface.
• Einstein (1879-1955)
• Overturns Newtonian conceptions of Physics. The
  universe is uncertain
• and we are ill-equipped observers.

6
Reeds Reflections on Modernist Literature

• Modernist literature is a movement away from
  Romanticism, Victorian trends in literature, and
  Realism, and really, is marked by its determined
  desire to break away from all previous forms and
  conventions. It reflects the lack of order seen
  in a growing urban society, celebrates passion
  over reason, and questions traditional
  moralities.

7
Some Formal Characteristics of Modernist
Literature

• Open and Experimental Form
• Discontinuity
• Juxtaposition
• Intertextuality
• Classical Allusions
• Borrowings From Other Cultures and Texts

8
T.S. Eliot

• I grow old I grow old    
• I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. 
• Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to
  eat a peach?
• I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk
  upon the beach.
• I have heard the mermaids singing, each to
  each. 
• I do not think that they will sing to me.
• ( The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock lines
  120-125)

9
Some Thematic Characteristics of Modernist
Literature

• Alienation of the individual and the artist
• Society as fractured and culture as fragmented
• Sense of dislocation and meaninglessness
• Questioning the value of cultural norms
• Rejecting recorded history and valuing the mythic
• Focusing on the urban, the mundane, and the
  marginalized

10
James Joyce

• I will not serve that in which I no longer
  believe whether it call itself home, my
  fatherland or my church and I will try to
  express myself in some mode of life or art as
  freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for
  my defence the only arms I allow myself to use,
  silence, exile, and cunning.
• (A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man)