Scarica Modernism e più Appunti in PDF di Letteratura Inglese solo su Docsity! MODERNISM The first decades of the 20th century were a period of extraordinary originality and vitality in the history of art. Artistic activity was mainly centred in Paris. However, some of the main representatives were not French, and innovation and radical remarking of all arts took place in Europe as well as in America. The term modernism in therefore used to refer to this powerful international movement reaching through Western cultures. The term covers a variety of trends and currents that gave shape to the modern consciousness and contributed to express the nature of modern experience. Originated at the beginning of the century, in a period of deep social and intellectual change, Modernism dominated the sensibility and aesthetic choices of the great artists and writers of the age. It implied a break with traditional values and assumptions, a rejection of Naturalism and Decadentism, in favour of introspection and technical skill. A number of common features can be identified: • It international distortion of shapes; • The breaking down of limitations in space and time; • The awareness that our perception of reality is necessarily uncertain, temporary and subject to change; • The need to reflect the complexity of modern urban life in artistic form; • The intensity of the isolated ‘moment’ or ‘image’ to provide a true insight into the nature of things; • An interest in the primitive and a reconsideration of the <<past>> without the restrictions imposed by national or continental culture; • The importance of unconscious as well as conscious life; • The impossibility to give a final or absolute interpretation of reality. As to poetry, Modernism developed in England through the figures of Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot aiming at concreteness of presentation and a witty, anti – sentimental tone. Also, the early 20th century novel was affected by modernist influences, for example in the technical experimentation of the stream of consciousness. However, the rejection of the traditional structure and organization of the work of arts was not simply due to formal consideration. It also suggested the crisis of Western values, the alienation, fragmentation and disintegration that were emerging as the main features of the modern age. If on the one hand Modernism produced works of art that were too difficult and novel to be understood by the majority of its public, on the other hand, it had great social impact due to its unprecedented research into human consciousness. Key – ideas: ■ Break with the tradition. 1 ■ Isolation and alienation. ■ Creation of a subjective mythology. ■ Cosmopolitan literature. The sense of doubt already present in the anti – Victorian attitude of the late 19th century, continued in the opening years of the 20th and developed into a spirit of revolt and experimentation in all artistic fields. The isolation and the alienation of modern man became the main themes of literature. Most movements emphasized the loss of the sense of continuity between past and present through a radical break with tradition, whereas some intellectuals held the tradition and innovation were intertwined, as Eliot said in “Tradition and the Individual Talent” (1917) : “No poet, no artist of any art has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artist. You cannot value him alone […] what happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it”. The experimentation of the 1920s did not mean arbitrariness; it was an attempt to create a new system of references. Writers and poets drew inspiration from classical as well as new cultures to create a new subjective mythology. Artists regarded the past as a source that they could remould in a personal, original way. For instance, T.S Eliot in ‘The Waste Land’ exploited a wide range of influences: from Buddhist sources to the Metaphysical poets or even Dante; Joyce’s stream of consciousness is certainly indebted to Freud and Bergson, but stems from the process of dissolution of the novel that Sterne had started in the 18th century. Absorbing the influences of the past and the contemporary ones coming from abroad, English modern literature was becoming cosmopolitan, moving away from the upper – middle – class milieu of Victorian society. The most original contributions to English literature during the first half of this century have been made by Americans living in England, Pound and Eliot; by two Anglo – Irish authors, Yeats and Joyce; and a Welshman, Dylan Thomas. The most influential figure of the period was certainly Ezra Pound, who was not only a poet, but also a critic. The intellectuals of the 1930s followed the pattern of experimentation only in part. Interest in the human mind and consciousness moved on to political commitment both in poetry and in prose. The poetry of the years preceding the First World War was characterized by a sharp distinction between avant – garde groups and those poets that were still influenced by the Victorian Romantic tradition. The latter are usually described as Georgian poets, owing their name to an anthology, Georgian poetry, published under the reign of George V. Among these were: Rupert Brooke, Walter de la Mare, Edward Thomas. These poets prevalently expressed an ‘English’ sensibility, employing the conventions of diction, looking for guidance to Romantics and the Victorians. 2 Closely to this concept of the time were theories about the simultaneous existence of different levels of consciousness and sub consciousness, where the past experience is retained, and the existence of the past in the present determines the whole personality of each human being. If the distinction between past and present is almost meaningless in psychological terms, then there is no use in building a well-structured plot, in leading a character through a well arranged chronological sequence of events. Is not necessarily the passing of time that reveals the truth about characters. It may be unfolded in the course of a single day (as in Joyce’s Ulysses, and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway), by observing the character performing a common action, or by what Joyce called <<Epiphany>> , that is the sudden revelation on an interior reality caused by the most trivial events of everyday life. All this led the novelists to reject the traditional omniscient narrator and interest in outward actions and the discover new methods able to portray the individual consciousness with a consequent shifting of point of view, from the outside to the mind of the characters. Hence, the creator the ‘new narrative techniques’, the stream of consciousness technique or the interior monologue suitable for reproducing the uninterrupted flow of thoughts, sensations, memories, associations and emotions in a flux of words, ideas and images quite similar to the mind’s activity. In her famous essay “On Modern Fiction”, Virginia Woolf stated the importance for the writer to ‘examine for a moment and ordinary mind on an ordinary day’ and collect the ‘myriad impressions’ coming ‘from all sides’ in order to penetrate the life of the mind. The themes common to all the works of his period are: the relationship between love al loneliness and the absence of real communication among human beings, since everyone is a prisoner of his own consciousness. The task of the novelist becomes therefore the breaking of the barriers between reader and characters; the novelist must be no mere mediator or reporter, but must open up his characters’ consciousness for the reader, and in so doing look for a moral centre in that human experience. It is possible to distinguish at least three groups of novelists among the innovators of the first decades of the present century. • The first group consist of the ‘psychological novelists’, who concentrated their attention on the soul of their characters. However, they were traditional as regards the role of narrator. The most important are: ■ Joseph Conrad, whose novels try to go beyond the surface of external phenomena in order to record the mystery of human experience; ■ Henry James, who shifted the focus of the novel from the external event to the inner reactions caused in the mind of characters; ■ D.H. Lawrence, who centred his work on the destructive effects of industrialisation, the inner conflicts and tensions of working – class people, and the liberating function of sexuality, sees as the only force capable of establishing a relationship between a man and woman; ■ E.M. Foster, whose recurrent theme is the complexity of human relationship seen in their limitations and possibilities, his analysis of the contrast between two mentalities or cultures. 5 • The second group includes the modernist novelists, who chose subjective narrative techniques, exploring the mind of one or more characters, like James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. • The social and political problems of the thirties forced the writers’ attention back to the society around them. Many British intellectuals had Marxist sympathies and tended to become didactic and take a political stance. They used old story – telling methods, and a straightforward style. George Orwell and Aldous Huxley were outstanding authors of dystopian novels attacking the ideals of scientific progress and totalitarianism. Both depicted a gloomy and savage future, as a warning for the present. Although the experimental novel was highly influential, the new generation of writers followed the pattern set by the psychological and social novels. Traditional novel. • Interest in society and outward actions • Chronological time • Omniscient narrator • Didactic aim Modern novel. • Interest in man and psyche • Subjective time • Stream of consciousness technique • Looking for a moral centre in human experience • The interior monologue. The 20th century writers understood it was impossible to reproduce the complexity of the human mind using traditional techniques, so, they looked for more suitable means of expressions. The method adopted by them to represent, in a novel, the unspoken activity of the mind before being ordered in speech was the interior monologue. Is necessary distinguish three kinds of interior monologue: ■ Indirect interior monologue ■ Interior monologue 6 ■ Extreme interior monologue Indirect interior monologue Is characterised by the following devices: a. The author is present within the narration; the character’s thoughts can be presented both directly and by adding descriptions. b. The character stays fixed in space while his/her consciousness moves freely in time: however, in the character’s mind everything happens in the present, which can be extend to infinity or contract to a moment. This concept of ‘inner time’ is preferred to ‘exterior time’. c. The character stays fixed in time whereas a spatial points of reference changes. Exterior events are used to present the coexistence of various inner reactions to them. Are used two points of view, one is impersonal and omniscient; the other one is inside the mind of the character/s. The writers who most used the indirect internal monologue were Richardson and Virginia Woolf. Interior monologue Interior monologue, where there is no interference by the author and it is the character’s consciousness that takes over the page using the first personal pronoun. Extreme interior monologue James Joyce used the technique of the extreme interior monologue. Usually in this technique, the narration takes place inside the mind of the main character, for example, while is dreaming. • Drama in the modern age. The first important writer of verse drama was Eliot, whose theories on the use of poetic language as opposed to the language of everyday life in dramatic dialogue had a revolutionary impact. Eliot, was imitated by other writers, such a Auden, Fry; but their plays being too far removed from the temporary social problems, were less successful. • ‘My last duchess’ by Browning. 7