Modernism and PostModernism
An Overview
Prepared by Courtney Hanna-McNamara
Adapted from Prentice Hall: The English
Tradition and other sources
Transition from
Victorianism to Modernism
• “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold (pp.842-3 in
the textbook)
– “and bring/ The eternal note of sadness in”
• This is not the optimistic tone of most Victorian works!
– “But now I only hear/ Its melancholy, long,
withdrawing roar”
• The “golden age of Britain” is retreating and a new age is
being ushered in
– Final stanza is critical; depicts the uncertainty of life at
the opening of the 20th century
So…what happened next?
• Nothing could have been more obvious to the peoples of
the early twentieth century than the rapidity with which
war was becoming impossible. And as certainly they did
not see it. They did not see it until the atomic bombs
burst in their fumbling hands. – H. G. Wells
• The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not
see them lit again in our lifetime. – Sir Edward Grey
• You know only/ a heap of broken images, where the sun
beats,/ and the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no
relief,/ and the dry stone no sound of water…/ I think we
are in the rats’ alley/ Where the dead men lost their
bones. – T. S. Eliot
• Make it new. – Ezra Pound
So…what happened next? (cont.)
• Dehumanization of industrialized society
• World War I – senseless deaths,
unnecessary war
• Political revolutions and upheavals
• Uncertain financial times
• Collapse of Britain as a world power
(largely due to failed colonized states,
rebellion of the Irish, etc.)
• = a general sense of chaos and unrest
“The Second Coming”
• W. B. Yeats, page 1051
• “New Historicist” close-read of the poem
• “The falcon cannot hear the falconer”
– “old world tactics, new world killing machines”
– Senseless violence = the world doesn’t make logical
sense
– The natural order of things has been disturbed
• “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold”
– Truth no longer exists
– They felt there was no ground to stand on
“The Second Coming” cont.
• “The ceremony of innocence is drowned”
– Disillusionment: a loss of faith in a previously held belief that is
now known to be false
• “The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are full of
passionate intensity”
– “the lost generation”
• The soldiers killed in WWI who were filled with a passionate
intensity for no good reason
• Those left behind are “lost” because they can no longer find
anything to fight for
• “Surely the Second Coming is at hand”
– Day of Reckoning for the world
– In literature, the literary epiphany: a realization of reality that
comes upon one suddenly and without warning
“The Second Coming” cont.
• “A shape with lion body and the head of a man,/ A gaze blank and
pitiless as the sun”
– Stream of consciousness: a writing style that mimics the pattern of the
human mind (imitating dream states, or the random thought processes
of humans)
• “twenty centuries of stony sleep/ Were vexed to nightmare by a
rocking cradle”
– Rejection of literary traditions
– The old ways are no longer soothing or satisfying – instead, false hope
in a “fairytale ending” creates vexation
• “what rough beast, its hour come round at last,/ Slouches towards
Bethlehem to be born?”
– “make it new”
– Birth of a new, monstrous reality in literature and life
– Writers must make their own way in the world and create a literature
that would best reflect their new understanding of the chaotic universe
Who were the Modernists?
• Poets T. S. Eliot, W. B. Yeats, Dylan
Thomas
• Novelists Virginia Woolf and James Joyce
• Dystopian authors Aldous Huxley, George
Orwell
• Some writers continued in the tradition of
Wilde with social satire, though much
more pointed in its attack on upper-class
society (Waugh, Wodehouse)
How long can they be so
depressed?
• Not that long, actually.
• After WWII, people realized the chaos
wasn’t going anywhere.
• For the first generation, there was truly a
sense of loss about moving from an era of
optimism to one of utter despair
• For later generations, they only knew the
utter despair – so it didn’t seem quite so
bad.
If they stopped pouting, what did
they write about instead?
• Post-Modernism
• “Embrace the chaos” – if the world is chaotic, we
can’t change that, so we might as well work with
it.
• The modernists mourned a loss of truth and
logic; the post-modernists encourage a way of
thinking about the world that defies definition
and categorization
• In fact, they would reject the idea of teaching a
lesson on what post-modernism is!
What did these post-modernists
write about?
• The ordinary and every
day
– Stories about ordinary
occurrences – but nothing
happens at the end to
make it seem like a “plot”
• Politics, religion, stronglyheld beliefs
– Lots of satire!
– Lots of critical thought
about what’s wrong with
institutions
What else did they write about?
•
Pastiche
– The imitation of other art forms,
works
– Using lots of different previously
known or understood concepts
and mashing them together
•
Metafiction
– Writing about writing
– Allusions like you’ve never seen
before (footnotes that take over
entire pages, etc.)
– The novel/poem/story/etc. itself as
a form becomes analyzed, picked
apart, dissected and destroyed in
order to say something about
what it “means”
– Questions who has control over
the text – The author? The
audience? Does it matter?
Post-Modern Writers
• Poetry: Philip Larkin, Stevie Smith
• Novels: Salman Rushdie, Jeanette
Winterson, Nick Hornby
And what happened after that?
What period are we in now?
• Some current writers still use a postmodern style.
• Otherwise, it’s difficult to categorize a
period when you’re in it – we’ll have to wait
and see what dominant characteristics
come out of this time period, which is
sometimes referred to as “contemporary”
or “post-9/11” literature.
Photo references
• http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/ori
ginal/seinfeld.jpg
• http://www.mexicanpictures.com/headinge
ast/images/keith-arnatt.jpg