MODERNISM

Modernism, in the fine arts, a break with the past and the concurrent search for new forms of
expression. Modernism fostered a period of experimentation in the arts from the late 19th to
the mid-20th century, particularly in the years following World War I. The term Modernism is also
used to refer to literary movements other than the European and American movement of the
early to mid-20th century. In Latin American literature.

Modernism is a period in literary history which started around the early 1900s and continued
until the early 1940s. Modernist writers in general rebelled against clear-cut storytelling and
formulaic verse from the 19th century. Instead, many of them told fragmented stories which
reflected the fragmented state of society during and after World War I.

In an era characterized by industrialization, the nearly global adoption of capitalism, rapid social
change, and advances in science and the social sciences (e.g., Freudian theory), Modernists felt
a growing alienation incompatible with Victorian morality, optimism, and convention. New ideas
in psychology, philosophy, and political theory kindled a search for new modes of expression.

Many Modernists wrote in free verse and they included many countries and cultures in their
poems. Some wrote using numerous points-of-view or even used a “stream-of-consciousness”
style. These writing styles further demonstrate the way the scattered state of society affected
the work of writes at that time.

Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman are thought to be the mother and father of the movement
because they had the most direct influence on early Modernists. Within a few years, many
Modernist writers moved overseas. There was an exciting expatriate scene in Paris which
included Pound, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein,and Mina Loy. These writers held and attended
literary salons. Poets such as E.E. Cummings, Hart Crane, and William Carlos Williams also
attended these salons at times.

Not all Modernist poets followed the writers who were making revolutionary changes to the
world of poetics. Marianne Moore, for example, wrote some form poetry, and Robert Frost once
said that writing free verse was "like playing tennis without a net." Additionally, writers who had
gained popularity toward the end of the Modernist era were inspired by less experimental poets
such as Thomas Hardy and W.B. Yeats.

Key points:

Many creatives broke from traditional forms of writing as they did not best reflect the struggles
and issues of society. Modernism grew out of a critical turning point in nearly every area of
civilisation; it is marked by profound shifts in human perception. This was a time of increasing
internalisation of narration in literature, with aspects such as stream of consciousness,
rejection of narrative continuity, and non-linear chronology.

Modernism in various fields

Literature

The Modernist impulse is fueled in various literatures by industrialization and urbanization and
by the search for an authentic response to a much-changed world. Although prewar works by
Henry James, Joseph Conrad, and other writers are considered Modernist, Modernism as a
literary movement is typically associated with the period after World War I. The enormity of the
war had undermined humankind’s faith in the foundations of Western society and culture, and
postwar Modernist literature reflected a sense of disillusionment and fragmentation. A primary
theme of T.S. Eliot’s long poem The Waste Land (1922), a seminal Modernist work, is the search
for redemption and renewal in a sterile and spiritually empty landscape. With its fragmentary
images and obscure allusions, the poem is typical of Modernism in requiring the reader to take
an active role in interpreting the text.

Eliot’s was not the dominant voice among Modernist poets. In the United States Robert Frost
and Carl Sandburg evocatively described the regions—New England and the Midwest,
respectively in which they lived. A sense of disillusionment and loss pervades much American
Modernist fiction. During the 1920s Edna St. Vincent Millay, Marianne Moore, and E.E.
Cummings expressed a spirit of revolution and experimentation in their poetry. That sense may
be centred on specific individuals, or it may be directed toward American society or toward
civilization generally. It may generate a nihilistic, destructive impulse, or it may express hope at
the prospect of change.

Across the Atlantic, the publication of the Irish writer James Joyce’s Ulysses in 1922 was a
landmark event in the development of Modernist literature. Dense, lengthy, and controversial,
the novel details the events of one day in the life of three Dubliners through a technique known
as stream of consciousness, which commonly ignores orderly sentence structure and
incorporates fragments of thought in an attempt to capture the flow of characters’ mental
processes. Portions of the book were considered obscene, and Ulysses was banned for many
years in English-speaking countries. Other European Modernist authors whose works rejected
chronological and narrative continuity included Virginia Woolf, Marcel Proust, and the American
expatriate Gertrude Stein.

Visual arts and Architecture

In the visual arts the roots of Modernism are often traced back to painter Édouard Manet, who,
beginning in the 1860s, not only depicted scenes of modern life but also broke with tradition
when he made no attempt to mimic the real world by way of perspective and modeling. He
instead drew attention to the fact that his work of art was simply paint on a flat canvas and that
it was made by using a paintbrush, which sometimes left its mark on the surface of the
composition. The avant-garde movements that followed including Impressionism,
PostImpressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Expressionism, Constructivism, de Stijl, and Abstract
Expressionism are generally defined as Modernist. Over the span of these movements, artists
increasingly focused on the intrinsic qualities of their media—e.g., line, form, and colour—and
moved away from inherited notions of art.

By the beginning of the 20th century, architects also had increasingly abandoned past styles
and conventions in favour of a form of architecture based on essential functional concerns.
They were helped by advances in building technologies such as the steel frame and the curtain
wall. In the period after World War I these tendencies became codified as the International Style,
which utilized simple geometric shapes and unadorned facades and which abandoned any use
of historical reference; the steel-and-glass buildings of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le
Corbusier embodied this style. In the mid-to-late 20th century this style manifested itself in
clean-lined, unadorned glass skyscrapers and mass housing projects.

Music and Dance

Composers, including Arnold Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky, and Anton Webern, sought new
solutions within new forms and used as-yet-untried approaches to tonality. Schoenberg was the
pioneer when he discarded traditional harmonic concepts of consonance and dissonance,
leading to the development of atonality and 12-tone technique (in which all 12 tones of the
octave are serialized, or given an ordered relationship). Stravinsky’s revolutionary style, variously
labeled “dynamism,” “barbarism,” or “primitivism,” concentrated on metric imbalance and
percussive dissonance and introduced a decade of extreme experimentation that coincided with
World War I, a period of major social and political upheaval.

In dance a rebellion against both balletic and interpretive traditions had its roots in the work of
Émile JaquesDelcroze, proponent of the eurythmics system of musical instruction; Rudolf
Laban, who analyzed and systematized forms of human motion into a system he called
Labanotation and Loie Fuller, an American actress turned dancer who first gave the free dance
artistic status in the United States. Her use of theatrical lighting and transparent lengths of
China silk fabrics at once won her the acclaim of artists as well as general audiences. She
preceded other modern dancers in rebelling against any formal technique, in establishing a
company, and in making films. By examining a specific aspect of dance, each of these
innovators helped bring about the era of modern dance. At the same time in Germany, Mary
Wigman, Hanya Holm, and others were also establishing comparably formal and expressionist
styles. As in Duncan’s dancing, the torso and pelvis were employed as the centres of dance
movement. Horizontal movement close to the floor became as integral to modern dance as the
upright stance is to ballet. In the tense, often intentionally ugly, bent limbs and flat feet of the
dancers, modern dance conveyed certain emotions that ballet at that time eschewed.
Furthermore, modern dance dealt with immediate and contemporary concerns in contrast to the
formal, classical, and often narrative aspects of ballet.
It achieved a new expressive intensity and directness. Another influential pioneer of modern
dance was dancer, choreographer, and anthropologist Katherine Dunham, who examined and
interpreted the dances, rituals, and folklore of the Black diaspora in the tropical Americas and
the Caribbean. By incorporating authentic regional dance movements and developing a
technical system that educated her students mentally as well as physically, she expanded the
boundaries of modern dance. Her influence continued into the 21st century.

Modernism Movement: Themes

1. Individualism & Alienation

2. Nihilism

3. Absurdity

Eminent Writers & their works

1. Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis (1915), The Trial (1925), The Castle (1926)

2. James Joyce's Ulysses (1922), Dubliners (1914), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
(1916)

3. Ezra Pound's 'In a Station of the Metro' (1913), 'The Return' (1917)

4. Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway (1925), To The Lighthouse (1927)

Characteristics of Modernism in Literature

1. Experimentation in writing style

2. Subjectivity & Multi-Perspectives

3. Interiority and Individualism

4. Industrialisation & Urbanisation