Modernist texts Essays

  • Unreliable Narration and Its Effects in a Modernist Text

    2362 Words  | 5 Pages

    Modernist text speaks about the historical and social context of WWI. As a movement, modernism highlights the impact of the war and its impact on society. Two modernistic authors during WWI, Ford Madox Ford and Ernest Hemingway choose to express their text with fragmented timelines, to juxtapose war and the relationships in society. Yet, modernist text exposes the usage of dialogue as a mode that fragments the reader’s mind through the singular or multi-focalisation of events that adds to the reliability

  • The Inward Turn of Modernist Literature

    1707 Words  | 4 Pages

    Modernists did not have faith in the external reality put forth by social institutions, such as the government and religion, and they no longer considered these avenues as trustworthy means to discover the meaning of life. For this reason they turned within themselves to discover the answers. Modernist literature is centered on the psychological experience as opposed to the external realities of the world. The experience is moved inwards in an attempt to make modernist works more representative of

  • The Dead Father

    920 Words  | 2 Pages

    Miss Mandibleî in 1961, to his last novel, Paradise (1986).(Though The King is mentioned by Klinkowitz, it is clear he considers it to be barely part of the Barthelme canon.)For Klinkowitz, Barthelmeís near-obsessive goal as a post-modernist is to ìburyî his modernist father.For instance, Klinkowitz writes that, while at first glance ìMe and Miss Mandibleî seems a perfectly Kafkaesque tale of a man awakening to grotesquely transformed circumstances, in fact it is ì[f]ree of overweening anxiety and

  • The Modernist Attributes of C.L.R. James’s Minty Alley

    4158 Words  | 9 Pages

    The Modernist Attributes of C.L.R. James’s Minty Alley Born in Trinidad and later expatriating himself first to London and then the United States, C.L.R. James was a key figure of the West Indian literary scene during the 1930s. Today he is primarily associated with his nonliterary writings in sociology and politics, and his fiction seems to have dropped from critical attention. Part of this shortsightedness stems from the fact that little of his fiction is readily available to a reading public

  • On Feminism and Postmodernism

    3272 Words  | 7 Pages

    characteristics, most notably the deconstruction of the masculinised western ideology, feminism chooses to place itself within the absolutism of the modernist movement. While feminism argues for the continuation of the subject/object dichotomy, aiming largely to reverse the feminine position of the latter to the former, postmodernism would have the modernist movement deconstructed in its entirety, including all such metanarratives. Postmodernism also champions the fragmented self, the idea of a unitary

  • Beckett's Endgame

    2799 Words  | 6 Pages

    aligns Beckett with the pessimism of the Modernist movement is ironically different from the symbolic understanding that Beckett promotes through his characters and the scene. Beckett’s work does not suggest total hopelessness, but rather that the fears of change, self-centeredness, and despair of Hamm and Clov contribute to their miserable existence. He opposes the Modernist attitude of focus on the subjective, internal state, and reveals the soul of the Modernist to be shallow and starving. Many

  • Modernist Myth in Suna no Onna’s The Woman in the Dunes

    2004 Words  | 5 Pages

    Modernist Myth in Suna no Onna’s The Woman in the Dunes The Woman in the Dunes (Suna no Onna, 1964) was directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara and based on the novel by Kobo Abe and falls into the camp of modernism. It’s a faithful adaptation and has realistic and expressionistic elements. Because it is a parable and paradoxical, there are many interpretations – in other words, we’re on our own with this one. An entomologist (Niki) is walking in a stark desert-scape. Everything is shot in black

  • An Analysis of Jean Toomer's Cane

    1695 Words  | 4 Pages

    Analysis of Jean Toomer's Cane In the prose fiction Cane: Jean Toomer uses the background of the Black American in the South to assist in establishing the role of the modernist black writer.  While stylistic characteristics such as ambiguity of words and the irony of the contradictory sentences clearly mask this novel as a modernist work.   Toomer draws upon his experiences and his perspective of the life of Blacks in Georgia to create a setting capable of demonstrating the difficulties facing

  • Christian Bök - Inviting Us to Rethink how Language Works

    2240 Words  | 5 Pages

    In the post-Modernist world, developments in the sciences overshadow human relationships. To bridge humankind’s alienation from science and technology, Christian Bök turns science into poetry, and poetry into science. He delves into “pataphysics,” the poetics of an imaginary science which renders the English language whimsical and at times nonsensical. He also attempts virtuosic feats with his sound and concrete poetry. Bök’s language welcomes new interpretations and shows that poetry is an ongoing

  • Modernism vs Neo-Traditionalism

    1055 Words  | 3 Pages

    of the nineteenth century, such as steel, glass, electricity and elevators. By decreasing costs of building, modernists hoped to provide cheaper housing, affordable to almost anybody. The modernist movement was also promising to meet the growing demand for office spaces, hence the motto “form follows function” . Today, the inhabitants of every large city are able to see products of modernist influence. Its opposite, neo-traditionalism, is admired for its beauty and variety. “Small City U.S.A.” is an

  • Modernist Works and the Fear of the Fin de Siècle

    3333 Words  | 7 Pages

    Modernist Works and the Fear of the Fin de Siècle Fin de siècle is a term which is now used to refer to the period of the last 40 or so years of the Nineteenth Century and its art, yet at the time the word had genuine sociological connotations of modernity, social decay and reaction.  In France in particular though arguably throughout Europe, society was changing in such a way as to merit such a pessimistic term for the trend evolving.  The growing ability for the mass of the people to access

  • The Power of Horace McCoy’s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?

    2676 Words  | 6 Pages

    capacity of Noir literature to defy Modernist values and pioneer later avant-garde literary movements. This student produced a focused, organized, well supported essay. Nearly half a century has passed since most films and texts in the Noir tradition were created, yet one may wonder how much is really known about these popular American products. Scholars remain fascinated by many aspects of Film Noir, yet it appears that its fictional precursors (such as the texts of Cain, McCoy and Hammett) may have

  • Frank O’Hara as Modernist for the People

    3014 Words  | 7 Pages

    The poetry of Frank O'Hara is intimately connected to New York City.  He explores the role of the individual subject in the city and the mechanics of the city itself; yet because he engages the urban landscape in an urbane manner many readers of Frank O'Hara view him as the prankish patron of the New York art scene who occasionally took pen to paper.  Take this review by Herbert Leibowitz as an example: A fascinating amalgam of fan, connoisseur, and propagandist, he was considered by his friends

  • The X-Files

    667 Words  | 2 Pages

    belief that we live in a purely physical world and nothing exists beyond what our senses perceive. Modernists believe that people should be rationalistic optimists and depend only on the data of their sense of reason. Scully strongly displays the modernist world view throughout the show even after the two agents have been through many fantastic adventures. In the show as a whole there are modernist aspects because both Scully and Mulder are truth seekers. The shows motto is “the truth is out there”

  • Welcome to the Modernist Truman Show

    676 Words  | 2 Pages

    Welcome to the Modernist Truman Show From John Wayne and the western motif to William Shatner and the science fiction motif, Hollywood has been obsessed with the notion of frontier, taking this notion from an American ideology that encourages men to forge ahead into the unknown. Often, though, it seems these men are more running away from society than really running to the unknown. And in The Truman Show, that is what Truman is truly doing- running to the unknown in order to escape the responsibilities

  • Implications of Modernist Thought in Tender Is the Night

    1004 Words  | 3 Pages

    Implications of Modernist Thought in Tender Is the Night The implications of modernist thought in F. Scott Fitzgeralds' Tender Is the Night, become apparent when conceptualizing crime and punishment. Besides the murder of the Negro in the Parisian hotel, the idea of crime is plastic; adultery, deceit, moral depravity barely have consequences. Actions committed with good intentions often end in despair, such as the marriage of Dick and Nicole Diver. Similarly, seduction and dissimulation

  • Modernist Poets E.E. Cummings, Wallace Stevens, and T.S. Eliot Change the Face of American Poetry

    1695 Words  | 4 Pages

    Modernist Poets E.E. Cummings, Wallace Stevens, and T.S. Eliot Change the Face of American Poetry Modernist poets such as E.E. Cummings, Wallace Stevens, and T.S. Eliot changed the face of American poetry by destroying the notion that American culture is far inferior to European culture. These and other American poets accomplished the feat of defining an American poetic style in the Modern Era by means of a truly American idea. That idea is the melting pot. Just as American culture exists as

  • Dehumanization in Death of a Salesman

    1236 Words  | 3 Pages

    as Miller said, “Death of a Salesman is not, of course, in the realistic tradition, having broken out into quite a new synthesis of psychological and social dimensions” (Eight vii).  It did indeed “break out” in the modernist direction.  It is a wonderful example of the way modernist writers expressed their beliefs.  They believed that the industrialization of society caused people to lose their individuality.  Willy’s seniority at his advertising firm means very little in the larger scheme of things

  • Prufrock and Modernist notion of trivial things completeing themselves

    610 Words  | 2 Pages

    known as a sex addict. Prufrock, however, could never achieve something great. He was too afraid; it held him back and forced him to subject himself to only the most trivial things in life. ,It was these trivial things that Eliot wanted to show. The modernist society had forced many others into a life just like Prufrock lead. Unable to find true joy in any activity, everyone is subjected to trivial pursuits, shallow goals, and no pleasurable experiences. It was created by the notion that the things that

  • Modernist Opera

    2080 Words  | 5 Pages

    Modernist Opera Modernism, a major artistic movement of the first half of the twentieth century, is traditionally a classification of the visual arts, including such schools as Abstraction, Impressionism, and Expressionism. In architecture, too, was Modernism recognized, in the work of people like Frank Lloyd Wright. Even in literature, with the increasing use of symbolism, Modernism was an influence. Modernists in all of these art forms are consciously engaged in the expansion of the boundaries