Modernism and Post Modernism in Literature
Modernistic literature is the expression of the modern era (1901-45). It tends to revolve around themes of individuality, the randomness of life, mistrust of government and religion and the disbelief in absolute truth.
Jean Francois Lyotard
Lyotard's work is characterised by a persistent opposition to universals, he is fiercely critical of many of the 'universalist' claims of the Enlightenment, and several of his works serve to undermine the fundamental principles that generate these broad claims.
Lyotard was a frequent writer on aesthetic matters. He was, despite his reputation as a postmodernist, a great promoter of modernist art. Lyotard saw 'postmodernism' as a latent tendency within thought throughout time and not a narrowly-limited historical period. He favoured the startling and perplexing works of the high modernist avant-garde. In them he found a demonstration of the limits of our conceptuality, a valuable lesson for anyone too imbued with Enlightenment confidence. Lyotard has written extensively also on few contemporary artists of his choice: Valerio Adami, Daniel Buren, Marcel Duchamp, Bracha Ettinger and Barnett Newman, as well as on Paul Cézanne and Wassily Kandinsky
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) was a poet, dwelling chiefly on his spiritual relations with god, his poetry only became recognized in 1918 when he became published in Robert Bridges edition. The late publication effectively made the difficulties of his work anticipate modern poetry, and so James Joyce (1882-1941) was an Irish novelist, short story novel writer, poet and playwright born in Dublin.
Joyce wrote several volumes and an autobiographical novel which follows his life from infancy to his first departure for Paris. Joyce subsequently wrote an unsuccessful play published in 1918 and furthermore a slight volume of verses. These were amid the beginnings of his two great works to come, Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake. These both occupied the remainder of his life.
he made a major influence on later writers.
(13 June 1885- 28 January 1939)
William Butler Yeats was one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. In 1923 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for what the Nobel Committee described as "inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation."
YEATS WAS INTERESTED MAINLY IN THE LIKES OF:
mysticism, spiritualism, occultism and astrology
In 1916, Yeats quite suddenly decided that he didn't want to write pretty poems anymore - he wanted to write realistic poems: poems as urgent and as uncluttered as a newspaper article.He even wrote a poem about his decision: "A Coat". So some characteristics of Modernism in Yeats include: Demotic language (not poetic language) Political subject matter Ugliness and violence, where these are appropriate to the subject matter (no attempt to make everything aesthetically pleasing in a poeticised vision of loveliness).
TRADITIONAL YEATS POEM:
HE WISHES FOR THE CLOTHS OF HEAVEN
HAD I the heavens' embroidered cloths,Enwrought with golden and silver light,The blue and the dim and the dark clothsOf night and light and the half-light,I would spread the cloths under your feet:But I, being poor, have only my dreams;I have spread my dreams under your feet;Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
MODERNIST Yeats POEM:
THE SECOND COMING
TURNING and turning in the widening gyreThe falcon cannot hear the falconer;Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhereThe ceremony of innocence is drowned;The best lack all conviction, while the worstAre full of passionate intensity
Virginia Woolf
During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929), with its famous dictum, "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."
POST MODERNISM
The term Postmodern literature is used to describe certain characteristics of post–World War II literature, relying heavily, for example, on fragmentation, paradox, questionable narrators.
Unifying features often coincide with Jean-François Lyotard's concept of the "metanarrative" and "little narrative", Jacques Derrida's concept of "play", and Jean Baudrillard's "simulacra." For example, instead of the modernist quest for meaning in a chaotic world, the postmodern author eschews, often playfully, the possibility of meaning, and the postmodern novel is often a parody of this quest.
