Modernism in Literature: A Revolutionary Era and Its Impact on British Writers, Appunti di Inglese

Scarica Modernism in Literature: A Revolutionary Era and Its Impact on British Writers e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! LITERARY BACKGROUND. The beginning of the 20th century was marked by one of the most productive literary and artistic revolutions of all time. AII the aspects that were traditionally associated with Victorian literature were swept away by the spread of new theories and ideas that revolutionized the concept of life and of the world. The spread of Einstein's theory of relativity destroyed the faith objective reality, and the influence of Freud's psychoanalysis radically changed the image of both the outer and the inner world. The experience of the First World War (1914-18) was the final blow to Victorian optimism and inaugurated an era of anxiety and uncertainty. These trends were reflected in the literary and artistic production of the period, which was characterized by strong technical and stylistic experimentalism and by the attempt to use literature to explore the hidden recesses of the 'modern' human mind. The Outburst of Modernism. The literature and the arts of the early 20h century were marked by the birth of "Modernism', which was influenced by different artistic movements, all of which were united in their attempt to rebel against the past and create new forms and styles in arts, literature and music. The main movements were: Futurism, Cubism, Expressionism, and Surrealism. It is characterized by: * Fragmentation of the narrative point of view and a multi-layered and complex narration; * Use of experimental narrative techniques that aim to render the flux of thoughts that characterize the working of the mind; Rejection of traditional grammar and punctuation in favour of unorthodox forms of expression; * Use of free verse and rejection of traditional verse forms in poetry; * Use of complex vocabulary and concepts. * Use of direct and indirect interior monologue The general idea that emerges from Modernist literature is that the human mind is at the centre of the writer's scrutiny: the writer tries to render its complexity and to express subjective, rather than objective truths. Britain and Modernism. In Britain the group of Modernist writers included authors such as the poet T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf and James Joyce. Their works dealt with the representation of the unconscious. The writers who belonged to this group formed a heterogeneous group of intellectuals who reflected on their capacity to represent the self and the world. Many of these writers used the 'Stream of Consciousness' technique as a means of expressing the complex workings of the human mind. These writers were deeply influenced by the historical events of these years, that's why authors attempted to express the instability of the time. Another important figure was Sigmund Freud. Freud's theories of psychoanalysis deeply influenced early 20th-century authors and it gave them tools to explore the hidden self of the characters. He introduced the idea of the instability of the self. In his masterpiece, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), he formalised the concept that consciousness is multi-layered and that reality exists only as it is perceived by the self. The first half of the 20th century was dominated by the experience of two world wars, which inevitably led to the biggest poetic production of the age. The most prolific groups of poets during the war years were the War Poets, a group of men who fought in the trenches during the First World War. These poets all enrolled enthusiastically when war broke out but they wrote poems in which the war is described as a terrible experience leading to death, suffering and alienation. The key figures of British war poetry were Wilfred Owen and Rupert Brooke. Most of the War Poets died in the trenches Another important poetical movement in the first half of the 20th century was Imagism. Imagist artists and poets drew inspiration from Symbolism, which broke the traditional metrical system and started to use free verse to express human feelings. One of the leading figures of Imagism is the american poet Ezra Pound. The Imagist movement started in 1914, when Imagist artists published their own manifesto and the most important elements are the free use of metrical forms and the avoidance of vague concepts in favour of concreteness. Imagism contributed to the birth of Modernist poetry and played a fundamental role in the definition of the personal style of T.S. Eliot. Thomas Eliot (1888/ 1965). Poet, playwright and critic, Eliot was born in the Unite States of America from a British family. He studied at Harvard University and then he moved to Paris, where he achieved a doctorate in philosophy. He moved to London and began to work as a teacher, and there he met the poet and critic Ezra Pound. He left his job at the bank for a position with Faber and Faber, a respected London publishing house. In 1927 Eliot became an Anglican and a British citizen. Considered one of the leading figures of the Modernist movement and of the avant-garde poets. Eliot was impressed by the French Symbolist from whom he took the ability to combine intellectualism and sensuous language but his style was innovative and original. He was awarded the nobel Prize in Literature in 1948 THE WASTE LAND His main work is “the waste land” (1922). It is composed of five parts and the most important is the first part, “ The Burial of the Dead”, in which the author presents a series of juxtapositions between life and death, fertility and sterility and hope and despair. The poem is written in free verse and is characterized by a high level of experimentation of the verse form, the length of lines and the use of punctuation. The language has different tones, from the solemn to the colloquial. Eliot's poem rejects any kind of narrative structure and contains different and apparently disconnected themes. T'his structural fragmentation makes Eliot's poem one of the best of Modernist poetry. Eliot's poem is full of quotes from ancient and classical sources such as Dante, Shakespeare and the Bible. AII of these sources are juxtaposed in an apparently incoherent way and represent the relics of a world that has been destroyed by modernity which Eliot represents as a sterile and arid land. The result is a poem in which meanings and characters are not clearly represented and events cannot be easily located in a specific time or place. Eliot's poem seems to be structured as a series of 'broken images' which are juxtaposed to the chaos of the modern world.