The Modern Period in British

Literature

20th-Century British and Irish Modernist Literature

A Quick Overview of General Characteristics, Themes, and Agendas

Historical Background• 1901- The End of the Reign of Queen Victoria• 1903- Ford Motor Company Founded• 1905- Einstein Unveils the Theory of Special Relativity• 1914-18- WWI• 1920- League of Nations Formed• 1929- Stock Market Crash• 1933- Hitler Rises to Power• 1939-45- WWII• 1945- Atomic Bomb Dropped on Japan• 1969- Apollo Lands on the Moon

Who is a “British” Writer in the 20th Century

• 20th-century writers who we call British– Joseph Conrad (Polish)– T.S.Eliot & Ezra Pound (Americans)– William B. Yeats & James Joyce (Irish)

The British Empire has Stretched Across the Globe

• Writers that were once marginalized by sexuality, gender, and class were now

celebrated.

W. H. Auden Virginia Woolf D. H. Lawrence

The World of Science, Philosophy, and Ideology• Marx (1818-1883)

Marx felt that reality was determined by materialist cultures and economics.He called for a social revolution.

• Darwin (1809-1882)– Darwin's theory of evolution and “survival of the fittest” suggests that survival is determined by the ability to adapt. The Origin of the Species

• Nietzsche (1844-1900)Feels that traditional religions have been debunked by

physical and natural sciences and thus, that – moral and ethical systems that arise from– traditional religions are illogical.

•Freud (1856-1939)• Freud ‘s theories of the dynamic unconscious suggested that humans are not fully aware of what they think or why they think it. His ideas proposed thatawareness existed in layers and that many thoughts occur

"below the surface.”

• Einstein (1879-1955)• Overturns Newtonian conceptions of Physics.

The universe is uncertain and we are ill-equipped observers.

Reflections on Modernist Literature

• Modernist literature is a movement away from Romanticism, Victorian trends in literature, and Realism, and really, is marked by its determined desire to break away from all previous forms and conventions. It reflects the lack of order seen in a growing urban society, celebrates passion over reason, and questions traditional moralities.

Some Formal Characteristics of Modernist Literature

• Open and Experimental Form• Discontinuity• Juxtaposition• Intertextuality• Classical Allusions• Borrowings From Other Cultures and

Texts

1. T.S. EliotI grow old … I grow old … I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

( “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” lines 120-125)

Some Thematic Characteristics of Modernist Literature

• Alienation of the individual and the artist• Society as fractured and culture as

fragmented• Sense of dislocation and meaninglessness• Questioning the value of cultural norms• Rejecting recorded history and valuing the

mythic• Focusing on the urban, the mundane, and the

marginalized

2. James Joyce

I will not serve that in which I no longer believe whether it call itself home, my fatherland or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use, silence, exile, and cunning.

(A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man)

Thanks