Modernist Literary Movement - Essay Example

Modernist Literary Movement Invitation It is with great pleasure that I invite you to read a multigenre research paper on Modernist literary movement, finished on March, 13, 2007. This paper will provide you a unique opportunity to obtain more information about Modernism as a literary movement, and explore its origins, influences, causes and effects. In addition, you will have the opportunity to know its relevant authors and works. The following genres will await you: An essay, which describes the influences that different authors had on Modernism. A magazine article, introducing the characteristics of Modernist literature. A collage of photographs and paintings, which represents some of the most important authors of Modernism. A timeline, which shows the publication of Modernist works during the period 1910-1925, in accordance with historical events. Finally, a love letter, in which a twenty-first-century reader explains why she loves Modernist literature and what she finds still contemporary, insightful and interesting in present-day times. With best regards, (Your name) Essay: Influences on Modernism Modernism is a literature of the twentieth century which was gestated by seven writers in different fields. These writers, born in the nineteenth century, altered people’s most fundamental interpretations of reality (Childs 26). They are Marx, Darwin, Freud, Bergson, Nietzsche, Saussure and Einstein. Marx’s and Marxist influence upon Modernism is undeniable. Marx placed crisis at the center of capitalist development, and Modernism has been characterized as a literature of crisis. Additionally, the impact of Darwin’s evolutionary theory influenced Modernist writing, in a close relation to Marx’s critique of capitalism. “Both evolution and capitalism were great levelers, supposedly liberating individuals from archaic rule by the clergy and the aristocracy but dividing humanity between the strong and the weak, either physically or financially” (Childs 36). The crisis that pervades twentieth-century culture is not only an economic one. A great crisis of belief constitutes the starting point of Modernism, and it was caused by the loss of faith, experience of fragmentation and disintegration, and the shattering of cultural symbols and norms. “At the center of this crisis were the new technologies of science, the epistemology of logical positivism, and the relativism of functionalist thought –in short, major aspects of the philosophical perspectives that Freud embodied” (qtd. in Childs 48). Freud’s interpretation of personality and dreams was present in Modernist framework, while the French philosopher Henri Bergson changed the representation of time in fiction. Bergson’s Time and Free Will constitutes a clear influence for Modernist writers Virginia Woolf and James Joyce. The time began to be considered beyond the constraints of hours, minutes and seconds. Individuals order and feel reality differently from external time, and Modernist writers represented this individual experience of time. Proust stated that reality takes place in the memory, and T.S. Eliot reflects on the time in its famous poem The Waste Land. “Understandably, this new conception of the world led to the use of different techniques in art, such as the abrupt beginning and open-ended conclusion of many Modernist novels. Both Bergson and Freud created a view of an individual-centered reality, in which the past events shape the psyche and the intuition overcomes rational reflections, which was combined with Nietzsche’s thought. In his Essay on Self-Criticism, Nietzsche foreshadows the Modernist self-scrutinizing and the focus on aesthetics. Along with Darwin and Freud, Nietzsche contributed to an increased interest in myth. Joyce´s Ulysses is a great modernist work which demonstrates the recreation of the myth within an urban and modern context. “In a famous review of Ulysses, published in 1923, T.S. Eliot had argued that Joyce’s use of Homeric myth had provided ‘a way of controlling, of ordering, of giving a shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history” (Rainey xxii). At the same time, Ferdinand de Saussure led a revolution about language. The crisis of Modernism affected the literary use of language, and enabled free verse, imagism, expressions of the unconscious, among other innovative phenomena. “If, with world-changing consequences, Freud decentred the individual and Marx decentred history, it was Saussure’s decentring of language which made possible so such subsequent theoretical work across the art, social science and humanities in the second half of the twentieth century. His importance to Modernism lies in his parallel attempt to explore the relationship between language and meaning” (Childs 63-64). Finally, Einstein’s theory studied the physical universe with ambiguity and flexibility, which was taken by Modernists to free themselves from social conventions and challenge the aesthetic guidelines from the previous generation. Narrative becomes relative, due to the use of perspective, unreliability, instability and subjectivism. In modernist fiction, as well as in relativity theory, the point of view is crucial. Modernism was a literary movement that received influences from the major authors in the fields of economics, science, psychology, philosophy and linguistics. Its importance does not only relate to its causes, but also to the effects on later movements, such as Postmodernism. Modernism constitutes a topic that integrates lots of viewpoints from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and its literature, impregnated with such influences, become universal and timeless. Magazine Article: What is Modernism? The term Modernism is often defined as a literary movement characterized by crisis and formal experimentation. However, its authors did not consider themselves as Modernists. Modernism comprises some common features of diverse practices and theories of art on the first half of the twentieth century. The term was coined during the 1960s. Some theorists (Bell, Leverson, Kolocotroni et al.) located Modernism between the decades of 1890 and 1930, ending with the beginning of World War II in 1939. Its peak period in the Anglo-American context lay between 1910 and 1925, coinciding with the publication of great works, such as Joyce’s Ulysses and Eliot’s The Waste Land. Modernism is embedded in its social and historical world, and appears as a product of it, a reaction against it, or a phenomenon that emerged at the same time with it. World War I, the labor struggles, the emergence of feminism and the race of empire belong to its context; although Modernist works do not have a social engagement. The technological changes during the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth brought a shift on the fictional treatment of time and space. Modernism constituted a rupture with the conventions of fiction, and it rejects especially Victorian literature. Some regular techniques that make up Modernist literature are the multiple points of view, stream of consciousness, an apparent fragmentation, the use of myths, the willingness to radical linguistic experiments, among others. Collage: Some Modernist authors Pictures 1. Wyndham Lewis (1884-1957), painter and Modernist writer, portrayed the great author Erza Pound (1885-1972). 2. James Joyce (1882-1941), portrayed by J. E. Blanche, 1935. 3. Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), the American novelist, was portrayed by the young Picasso, 1906. 4. Scene of a representation of Murder in the cathedral (1935), a play by T. S. Eliot (1888-1965), although his most famous work is the poem The waste land (1922). 5. The intervention of Erza Pound as literary agent was decisive in Joyce’s life and work. Erza Pound at Joyce’s grave in Zurich (1967). 6. Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), a lyric narrator focused on time, portrayed by Wyndam Lewis. Timeline: Modernism during 1910-1925 1910 1911 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 Ezra Pound, Provença. Ezra Pound, Canzoni. James Joyce meets Ezra Pound. W.B. Yeats meets Ezra Pound. James Joyce, Dubliners. Ezra Pound, Catay. Dadaism in Zurich T.S. Eliot, Prufock and Other Observations. W.B. Yeats, The Green Helmet and Other Poems. Ford Madox Ford, The Critical Attitude, The Simple Life Limited and Ladies Whose Bright Eyes. Ezra Pound, Ripostes of Ezra Pound. W.B. Yeats, Poems Written in Discouragement. W.B. Yeats, Responsibilities. Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out. W.B. Yeats, Reveries over Childhood and Youth, and Easter 1916. William Carlos Williams, Al que quiere Ford Madox Ford, A Call and The Portrait Manchu dynasty falls. Chinese republic proclaimed. W.B. Yeats, The Cutting of an Agate. William Carlos Williams, The Tempers. Albert Einstein postulates his General Theory of Relativity. James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Carl Jung, The Unconscious. Eliot attends Bergson’s lectures in Paris Carl Jung, The Theory of Psychoanalysis. Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way. Mexican Revolution World War I 1918 1919 1920 1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 James Joyce, Exiles. Ezra Pound, Hugh Selwyn Mauberly. T.S. Eliot, Poems, The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism, The Second-Order Mind, and Tradition and the Individual Talent. W.B. Yeats, Michael Robartes and the Danceri, Four Plays for Dancers and Four Years. James Joyce, Ulysses. William Carlos Williams, Go Go, and Spring and All. Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain. T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men. W.B. Yeats, Per Amica Silentia Lunae and In Memory of Major Robert Gregory. W.B. Yeats, The Wild Swans at Coole. W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming. William Carlos Williams, Sour Grapes. Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room. Elizabeth Bowen, Encounters. W.B. Yeats, The Cat and the Moon. Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway. Wyndham Lewis, Tarr. Marianne Moore, Poems. T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land. Wallace Stevens, Harmonium. Marianne Moore, Observations. W.B. Yeats, A Vision. World War I Love Letter: To Modernism Dear Modernism, You are constantly held by literary criticism and you are a frequent topic in literature classes. Hence, some people ignore if you are so needed and enjoyed by readers. Some critics argue about your obsolescence as a movement. Your period coincides with the birth of my grandparents, which could make anyone think that a literary movement from the beginnings of the twentieth century is far, and not influential for this new millennium. I address this letter to you, because I feel a love without nostalgia, without thinking if the later literature is better or worse. I love you, not because of the literary theory books, nor the experts’ opinion. I love you for the authors whose books made me admire and enjoy literature. I couldn’t understand Joyce’s Ulysses at the first reading, but, when readers are challenged to tie and understand a structure, we feel like detectives who solved the mysteries of fiction. Your authors haven’t died, because they remain alive in their books. Each reading recreates a literary work in a new reader’s mind. I can discover something new each time I read a text. As Eliot said, the time past and time present are both present in the future. Therefore, you are present in this new millennium and will be present in the future literature. Loving you is to love the immortality of art, which never ages or ends. Sincerely, A reader Conclusion A multigenre paper on Modernism constitutes a complex piece that requires critical thinking and creativity, both achieved by Modernist works. The selected genres go from the structure writing group to the creative writing, passing by a visual section, in a path that guides the reader from an informational tone to a free style. This represents an inverse way to understand Modernism, since the practice of literature makes the theory. The five genres considered in this research paper show a different point of view on Modernism. This literary movement was developed in various genres, such as poetry, novel and drama. Therefore, a multigenre approach to Modernism is appropriate for the research of this phenomenon. Work Cited Baldick, Chris. The Oxford English Literary History. Volume 10: The Modern Movement. Bell, Michael. “The metaphysics of Modernism”. The Cambridge Companion to Modernism. Ed. Michael Leverson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. 9-32. Bradbury, Malcolm & McFarlane, James, eds. Modernism: A Guide to European Literature 1890-1930. London: Penguin, 1991. Childs, Peter. Modernism (The New Critical Idiom). London: Routledge, 2000. Kolocotroni, Vassiliki, Goldman, Jane & Taxidou, Olga, eds. Modernism: An Anthology of Sources and Documents. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Leverson, Michael. “Introduction”. The Cambridge Companion to Modernism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. 1-8. Leverson, Michael, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Modernism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Rainey, Lawrence S. Modernism: An Anthology. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005. Read More