Modernist Literature

History

• Modernism has its origins in the late 19th and early 20th century which is mainly in Europe and North America

• Characterised by a self-conscious break with traditional aesthetic forms.

• It represents a radical shift in cultural sensibilities just before World War I

• Modernist literature explores new subject matter brought about by an increasingly industrialised world

Formal/Stylistic characteristics

• Juxtaposition, irony, comparisons and satire are elements found in modernist writing

• Mostly written in first person• Typically reads as a long stream of consciousness similar to a

rant• Juxtaposition could be used in a way to represent something

that would be often unseen, e.g. a cat and a mouse as best friends

• Irony and satire are important tools for the modernist writer in helping them to make fun of and point out faults in what they are writing about, which normally would be problems within their society

Key Writers• e. e. Cummings (1894-1962)

- created about 2,900 poems, 2 autobiographical novels, 4 plays and several essays. - ‘I carry your heart with me’; “Be of love a little more careful than of anything”; "I imagine that yes is the only living thing."

• Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) - won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954, published 7 novels, 6 short story collections, and 2 non-fiction works.- ‘The Old Man and The Sea’; ‘The Sun Also Rises’; ‘A Very Short Story’

• Virginia Woolf (1882-1944)- regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century- ‘Mrs Dalloway’; ‘To The Lighthouse’; ‘Orlando’; ‘A Room of One’s Own’

Key Writers• W. B. Yeats (1865-1939)

- one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature- ‘The Winding Stair and Other Poems’; ‘The Tower’; ‘the Nobel Prize in Literature as the first Irishman’

• Thomas Mann (1875-1955) - ‘Exilliteratur’

• Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)- ‘Valley Candle’; ‘Anecdote of the Jar’; ‘Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock’; ‘The Emperor of Ice-Cream’; ‘The Idea of Order at Key West’; ‘Sunday Morning’; ‘The Snow Man’

• John Steinbeck (1902-1968)- ‘Of Mice and Men’; ‘The Grapes of Warth’; ‘East of Eden’

• Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)- best-known works include the "play for voices" – ‘Under Milk Wood’; ‘In my Craft or Sullen Art’

Key Writers

• James Joyce (1882-1941)• Luigi Pirandello• Katherine Mansfield• Joseph Conrad• F. Scott Fitzgerald