Modernism
1890-1945
Modernism
• An early twentieth-century movement in
the arts responding to the fragmented
world created by mass society and
industrialism
Characteristics
• A new objectivity or impersonality, in which
a work is built from images and allusions,
not direct statements of thoughts and
feelings
• A rejection of realistic depiction of life in
favor of the use of images for the artistic
effect
• Critical attention to the spiritual troubles of
modern life
Commitment to Creating
• Perhaps the most important artistic
movement of the 20th Century
• Many modernists used images as
symbols, leading to indirect, evocative
work
• Often presented experiences in fragments,
rather than a coherent whole
Modernism in Poetry
• Stressed the use of precise visual images
and unadorned, concise language
• William Butler Yeats was a leading poet
during the Modernism using directness
and drama
• T.S. Eliot – preeminent Modernist poet
– American who lived in England
– Wrote about the despair after WWI , while
linking the present with the past
Edwardian Age
• Named after King Edward VII, this period
lasted from 1901-1910
• A period of drastic change
• Changes that were undermining the
customs and assumptions of the Victorian
Age
– Ranges from use of electricity, to protests on
woman’s rights
Focus on Internal Conflict
• A struggle that takes place in a character's
mind is called internal conflict. For
example, a character may have to decide
between right and wrong or between two
solutions to a problem. Sometimes, a
character must deal with his or her own
mixed feelings or emotions.
– Man against himself
• Joseph Conrad – Lord Jim
Importance of Internal Conflict
• In short stories, there is usually one major conflict. In
longer stories, there could be several conflicts.
• Conflict adds excitement and suspense to a story. The
conflict usually becomes clear to the beginning of a
story. As the plot unfolds, the reader starts to wonder
what will happen next and how the characters will handle
the situation.
• The excitement usually builds to a high point, or climax.
Stream of Consciousness
• The technique of immersing readers in the
associational, disjointed flow of one or more
characters’ thoughts
• The plot line may weave in and out of time and
place, carrying the reader through the life span
of a character or further along a timeline to
incorporate the lives (and thoughts) of
characters from other time periods
• James Joyce was a pioneer in
this type of writing
Images of Modernism
• Modernism can be thought of as a
complex response to what photographs
imply
• Ezra Pound (American) and T.S. Eliot
wrote poetry as if they were taking
snapshots of the world and then cutting
and pasting them into collages
• Reliance on images to encapsulate a
feeling or perspective
Images of Modernism
• Novelist Virginia Woolf, on the other hand,
perfected techniques for conveying an
individual’s moment-by-moment
experience
• Her writing records what the moment looks
like to the individual
– What the world looks like depends on who is
looking
Short Story
• A brief work of fiction that usually features
a plot with a distinct beginning, middle,
and end
• Build up to a suspenseful climax with a
dramatic twist at the end
Elements of the Short Story
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Plot
Conflict
Setting
Character
Theme
Point of View (see
nest slide)
• Flashback: a scene
that interrupts the
sequence of events in
a narrative to reveal
events that occurred
in the past
• Foreshadowing:
clues hinting at
events likely to occur
later in the plot
Narrative Point of View
• There are three types of narrative point of view in a
story.
– 1st PPOV – main character is the
narrator….subjective narration based on POV of
this main character.
– 3rd PPOV (limited) – external narrator (not a
character in the story); connects with one main
character and reveals only the thoughts and
feelings of that character.
– 3rd PPOV (omniscient) – external narrator (not a
character in the story); reveals the thoughts and
feelings of all characters….all knowing
Elements of the
Modern British Short Story
• Characters represent everyday people with everyday
conflicts
• Conflicts tend to be internal and psychological
• Many times the resolution of the conflict results in
characters experiencing a sudden, intuitive insight or
perception into the reality or experience of a
particular situation.
• “Epiphany”