- What is Modern? When we say 'Modern', it automatically signifies that there was something ancient or old. Then we can differentiate that things which are not ancient or old or traditional are modern.
- Dictionary gave me meaning of the word Modern:-
- Pertaining to a current or recent time and style, not ancient.
- Synonym- contemporary.
- Antonym- dated, old, pre modern, ancient.
●"The Modern Age"(1901-1950).A.C. Ward- the Setting
- It is very difficult to differentiate when particular movement in history began or ended. We cannot give exact dates. But then even various critics have tried to put Modern age into different periods.
- When any new thing starts in history it doesn’t became particular movement rapidly. But after a long time people realizes the traces, seeds of that movement or age/epoch, which later on recorded by historians by keeping in mind particular references. The same case happens with all the great ages or says The Modern age also.
- Categorizing is very much western idea. They see in linear way like rail bogies, whereas for Indians everything is in cyclical nature (life-death-rebirth). My point is that thus they differentiate history also in various compartments.
- Literature captures fluctuations of time/ society. Literature is affected/ influenced by society. So whatever was happening in early 20th century that time is captured in The Modernist Literature.
- Modernism:-
- Although the term “modernism” generally refers to the collective literary trend in the early twentieth century, it more precisely applies to a group of British and American writers—such as James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and T. S. Eliot—who crafted carefully worded images in colloquial language. In the broader sense of “modernism,” early- twentieth-century writers broke up the traditional plot structure of narratives, experimented with language, fragmented ideas, played with shifting perspectives, and drew self-conscious attention to the very nature of language itself. Postmodern writers playfully create allusions, contradictions, meta-narratives, and linguistic games in order to disrupt reader expectations of fixed, objective references.
- In Modernism Experimentation and individualism became virtues, where in the past they were often heartily discouraged In contrast to the Romantic world view, the Modernist cares rather little for Nature, Being, or the overarching structures of history. Instead of progress and growth, the Modernist intelligentsia sees decay and a growing alienation of the individual. The machinery of modern society is perceived as impersonal, capitalist, and antagonistic to the artistic impulse. War most certainly had a great deal of influence on such ways of approaching the world. Two World Wars in the span of a generation effectively shell-shocked all of Western civilization.
- It is a literary & artistic movement that provided a radical break with traditional modes of western art, thought, religion, social convention & morality. Major theme of this period include the attack on notion of hierarchy, experimentation in new forms of narrative such as stream of consciousness, doubt about the existence of knowledge, objective realty, attention to alternative viewpoints & modes of thinking, and self referentiality as a means of drawing attention to the relationship between artist and audience, and form & content.
●How this age is important for Europeans?
- It is the age when human race moved faster forward and backward than during perhaps fifty generations in the past. It brought progress and regress both. (Scientific revolution-aero plane, other means of mass slaughter in two world wars, with nuclear power bring threat of universal destruction) (In peace time motor car & motor cycle gave almost unlimited mobility to millions).
▪Victorians V/S Modernist
- in the study of literature few things are most interesting than to consider periodic changes of outlook which sway the human mind and spirit, and to observe those fluctuations of value which cause the truths and certainties of one generation to appears as superstitions and baseless conventions in the eyes of the generation following.
- Young men & women during 20th century looked back upon the (Victorian Age) as dully hypocritical.
- -Victorian ideals appeared mean and superficial and stupid.
- From 1901 to 1925 English Literature was directed by mental attitudes, moral ideals and spiritual values at almost the opposite extreme to the attitudes, ideals & values governing Victorian literature.
- The old certainties were certainties no longer.
- Everything was held to be open to question.
Question
Examine
Test→ watchword of Modern Age.
- Standard of artistic craftsmanship and of aesthetic appreciation began to change fundamentally.
- What he Victorians had considered beautiful their children and grandchildren thought hideous.
- Intellectuals and artists at the turn of the 20th century believed the previous generation’s way of doing things was a cultural dead end. They could foresee worlds events were spiraling into unknown territory. The stability and quietude of Victorian civilization were rapidly becoming a thing of the past.
- The post Victorian generation disliked the furnishings of Victorian households; they were even more contemptuous of the furnishings of the Victorian minds.
- In the Victorian age there was a widespread and willing submission to the rule of expert.
- The voice of authority was accepted in religion, in politics, in literature, in family life.
Victorians
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Modernist
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- ♣ Characteristics of Modernism / literature
- High degree of complexity in structure
- Anxiety and interrogation
- reworks tradition
- Works are intensely self-reflexive, exploring the process of their own composition.
- Are often Fragmented and nonlinear, breaking up time frames and plots.
- Some critics identify a sense of apocalypse & disaster in modernism.
- City based.
- It is also located in the context of Empire and world wars, of advanced military technology.
- A great deal of experimentation with language and form.
- An interest in subjectivity and the working of the human consciousness.
- Often rejects realism & the idea that art has to capture reality.
- Modernist fiction defamiliarizes or makes strange what is common.
- MAKE IT NEW- is the Modernist slogan.
- Highly elitist because it was complex and used allusions and classical references that called for great erudition- which was available only to certain classes of people.
- FRUSTRATION
- FRAGMENTATION
- ISOLATION
- BROKENNESS
- NOTHINGNESS Characteristics of modernist Literature.
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