Modernism attempts to record the shifts and displacements of sensibility that occurred in the art and literature in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries and took us beyond familiar reality. While it is believed to have started with the movements like Imagism and Symbolism, its end is disputed about. Frank Kermode uses the term “neo-modernism” to suggest its continuity in the post-war art. The modernist literature is, in most critical usage, reckoned to be the literature of what Harold Hasenburg calls “the tradition of the new”. The task of such literature is its own self-realisation which is both outside and beyond established orders, breaking away from familiar functions of language and conventions of form.
Many practitioners rejected traditional realism and experimented with both the form and the content. This has meant though, not only a radical remaking of form, but also, as Frank Kermode says, the tendency to bring it closer to chaos, thus, producing a sense of ‘formal desperation’. Indeed, Modernism would seem to be the point at which the idea of the radical and innovating arts reaches formal crisis. While some literature participated in the ideological implications of this conflict, much writing retreated into a longer-term contextualisation of the confrontation as futile and resting on debased values.
The stylistic plurality of twentieth-century art - a plurality that Andre Malraux calls the ‘imaginary museum’ of stylistic heterodoxy in The Voices of Silence, leaves it open to various interpretations by writers as well as commentators. However, disposed to the apocalyptic view of history, the most remarkable feature of the age is its pessimism and despair. The modernist writer occupied a worl...
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The development of modernist sentiments is largely the result of spasmodic cultural transformations and the ensuing creative exchanges between architects, modern artists and designers. For the purpose of research, this paper will solely deal with Surrealism, an important aspect of Modernism and chart its development through two contemporary Australian surrealists – James Gleeson and Sidney Nolan.
ABSTRACT: British Avant-Garde art, poses a challenge to traditional aesthetic analysis. This paper will argue that such art is best understood in terms of Wittgenstein¡¦s concept of "seeing-as," and will point out that the artists often use this concept in describing their work. This is significant in that if we are to understand art in terms of cultural practice, then we must actually look at the practice. We will discuss initiatives such as the work of Damien Hirst, most famous for his animals in formaldehyde series, and that of Simon Patterson, who warps diagrams, e.g., replacing the names of stops on London Underground maps with those of philosophers. Cornelia Parker¡¦s idea that visual appeal is not the most important thing, but rather that the questions that are set up in an attempt to create an "almost invisible" art are what are central, will also be discussed. Also, if we concur with Danto¡¦s claims that "contemporary art no longer allows itself to be represented by master narratives," that Nothing is ruled out.", then it is indeed fruitful to understand art in terms of seeing-as. For application of this concept to art explains what occurs conceptually when the viewer shifts from identifying a work, as an art object, and then as not an art object, and explains why nothing is ruled out.
Before I elaborate further, perhaps it is necessary to make a distinction between the terms “modern” and “post modern” as they will be used in this study. In the most general sense of the word, “modern” refers to those writings published before and during World War II, while “post modern” refers to the works that came after this time period.
The characters of a modernist narrative reflected a new way of thinking. A summery no longer highlighted meaning, it was ambiguous. The ambiguity portrayed unmanageable futures. The Modernis...
The Modernist Fiction period took place during the 1920’s and revolutionized the American way of life in literature, economically, and socially. There was a national vision of upward mobility during this time that represented the American Dream. The upward mobility was seen through the consumerism and materialism that dominated this decade economically. Popular novels of this time reflected the mass consumerism in the lives of those wrote them. During the American Modernist Fiction period, Americans became increasingly materialistic throughout the roaring twenties; therefore, the American Dream was to obtain upper class status through the possession of material goods, which was reflected in many of this period’s works.
The modernist period was a time of change. After World War II many people found themselves unhappy, lonely, and depressed. With the groundbreaking influences of Karl Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche, many people began to question their own reality. What did it mean to exist? What was life, and what was death? The modernist author reflected this change, and confronted these questions with enthusiasm. Together modernist artists became the representative voice of the people. This voice transcended all forms of art, but was most successful in the written word. Through the experimentation of language and form, the modernist author managed to convey the meaninglessness felt by many, and created a light in the darkness of an uncertain world. Ernest Hemingway's short stories titled "A clean well-lighted Place", and F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Babylon Revisited" are two notable examples of literary art during the modernist period.
Modernism can be defined through the literary works of early independent 20th century writers. Modernism is exp...
In the beginning of the twentieth century, literature changed and focused on breaking away from the typical and predicate patterns of normal literature. Poets at this time took full advantage and stretched the idea of the mind’s conscience on how the world, mind, and language interact and contradict. Many authors, such as Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, and Twain, used the pain and anguish in first hand experiences to create and depict a new type of literature, modernism. In this time era, literature and art became a larger part of society and impacted more American lives than ever before. During the American modernism period of literature, authors, artists, and poets strived to create pieces of literature and art that challenged American traditions and tried to reinvent it, used new ways of communication, such as the telephone and cinema, to demonstrate the new modern social norms, and express the pain and suffering of the First World War.
One attribute of Modernist writing is Experimentation. This called for using new techniques and disregarding the old. Previous writing was often even considered "stereotyped and inadequate" (Holcombe and Torres). Modern writers thrived on originality and honesty to themselves and their tenets. They wrote of things that had never been advanced before and their subjects were far from those of the past eras. It could be observed that the Modernist writing completely contradicted its predecessors. The past was rejected with vigor and...
Post modernism is a very difficult concept to define. A French philosopher once defined post modernism as an "incredulity toward all meta narratives," which basically means a skeptical attitude toward all claims of absolute truth. Post modern writers use elements and techniques that provoke the reader to question their reading experience and scrutinize their own personal understanding of life and the values of their society. There are excellent examples of post modern writers using elements of post modern writing, such as irony, magic realism and fragmentation in the short stories read in Ms. Reynolds's English 4U class. The use of post modern elements in these short stories forces the reader to further their reading experience by going more in depth into the writing and figuring out how the story is significant to them and their view on the world.
Many may argue that the Modernist movement was a completely new and unique movement within British literature. The goal of this paper is to determine whether or not the Modernist Literary Movement was completely unique or not. The similarities found in the works of Modernist authors and poets, such as Joseph Conrad and Hilda Doolittle (H.D.), will be examined against Romanticism themes and authors such as William Wordsworth. What will be found is that Modernism is not a completely unique movement, but one that combines elements from previous literary movements.
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Modernism is by no means easy to define. In fact, no one is exactly sure if the movement has even ended yet. But that’s befitting of the period, as well as the pieces of literature that serve to define Modernism. Two pieces, T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and James Joyce’s “The Dead”, are epitomes of this modernism. In both, the main characters are paralyzed by an inability to communicate, even while speaking. Whether through Prufrock’s musings concerning love life, or Gabriel’s inability to evoke certain feelings out of his wife, both men experience this effeminization of the intellect and communication. But where does this communicative castration begin? Most likely, in the bustling metropolises and dehumanizing philosophies that precipitate the Modernist movement. The modern man witnessed the killing of fifteen million people in the first Great War – bestial in the sheer amount of murder this war created. Meanwhile, modernity defined man’s character for him: Darwinism told him that he was the offspring of lesser animals, that man was, in essence, himself an animal. Also, Freudian psychoanalysis told man that his psyche was the product of his childhood and sexual instincts. Defined by that which he had no control over, or was too young to consciously alter, the modern man’s identity was no longer his to artifice, but society’s to manufacture at the behest of environment and upbringing. Which makes sense because, when we talk about personalities, sexualities and such today, we constantly hear the phrase “nature versus nurture”. What about “self”? Does the self have no control over these very crucial aspects of identity? Modernity has told these men “no”, that they do not form their own identities but that all ...
This essay aims to explore the contextual ideas behind the modern movement, how it influenced today’s artists and thinkers, and how ‘Modernization, Modernity, Modernism’ shaped the world we live in. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, around 1860 after man had considerably conquered the machine, a new reality became prevalent in the lives of the newly industrialised world. Modernism includes more than just art and literature. By now it includes almost the whole of what is truly alive in our culture”(Greenberg 1982:5). This quote can be applied to the earlier days of modernism when jobs had changed from agricultural based employment to corporate and menial based labour.
Many believed that Modernist works were not “art” because they did not always look like real life. But what is “real life”? A new outlook on reality was taken by Modernists. What is true for one person at one time is not true for another person at a different time. Experimentation with perspective and truth was not confined to the canvas; it influenced literary circles as well.