The Shifting Sands of Expression
A journey through Literary Modernism: its radical departures, philosophical depths, and enduring influence on the 20th century and beyond.
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Origins and Defining Characteristics
A Break from Tradition
Literary modernism emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, marked by a deliberate and self-conscious departure from traditional modes of writing in both poetry and prose. This movement championed experimentation in literary form and expression, encapsulated by Ezra Pound's famous directive: "Make it new."
Reshaping Sensibilities
Driven by a conscious desire to overturn established norms, modernism sought to articulate the novel sensibilities of its era. The profound human costs of World War I, in particular, led to a reassessment of prevailing societal assumptions, influencing much modernist writing to engage with the technological advancements and societal transformations of modernity.
A Response to Change
As noted by literary scholar Mary Ann Gillies, modernist themes often share the "centrality of a conscious break with the past," reflecting a complex, continent-spanning response to a rapidly changing world across various disciplines.
Philosophy, Symbol, and the Modernist Psyche
The Collapse of Certainty
W. B. Yeats's line, "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold," often serves as a touchstone for modernism. Modernist writers frequently sought a metaphysical 'centre' or absolute truth, only to experience its fragmentation or collapse. This contrasts with postmodernism, which often celebrates this breakdown, exposing the inherent limitations of metaphysical claims.
Hume, Nietzsche, and Bergson
Philosophical shifts, tracing back to David Hume's skepticism about causality and the self, and Friedrich Nietzsche's emphasis on drives over facts, influenced this modernist sentiment. Henri Bergson's distinction between objective clock time and subjective, lived experience of time profoundly impacted novelists employing stream-of-consciousness techniques.
The Elusive Symbol
While Romantics sometimes perceived symbols as divine language, modernists, influenced by Symbolism, often emphasized the inscrutability and potential failure of symbols and metaphors. This led to a search for meaning that was often fraught with irony or a mystical yearning for non-rational understanding, as seen in the works of Wallace Stevens.
Roots and Influences
Psychological and Scientific Shifts
Early modernist thought was shaped by figures like Sigmund Freud, whose theories on the unconscious mind, and Ernst Mach, who questioned objective reality, provided new frameworks for understanding human experience. These ideas challenged the Victorian certainty in empirical knowledge.
Literary Forerunners
Key literary precursors include Fyodor Dostoevsky, whose psychological depth paved the way; Walt Whitman, with his innovative free verse; Gustave Flaubert, for his stylistic precision; and Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud, for their exploration of urban alienation and symbolic language. Knut Hamsun and August Strindberg also contributed through their introspective and experimental narratives.
Key Artistic and Literary Movements
Visual Arts
Modernist literature shares common ground with visual arts movements like Cubism (Picasso, Braque), Fauvism (Matisse), Expressionism (Kandinsky, Kirchner), Dada (Duchamp), and Surrealism (Dalรญ, Magritte). These movements similarly broke from representational traditions, experimented with form, and explored subjective experience.
Music and Theatre
In music, atonality (Schoenberg) and rhythmic innovation (Stravinsky) mirrored literary experimentation. Theatre saw the rise of Expressionism (Strindberg) and the Theatre of the Absurd (Beckett, Ionesco), challenging conventional dramatic structures and exploring existential themes.
Literary Styles
Within literature, movements like Imagism (Pound, H.D.) emphasized precise imagery and free verse. Symbolism (Mallarmรฉ, Yeats) explored the suggestive power of language. Futurism (Marinetti) celebrated technology and speed, while Dada and Surrealism embraced irrationality and the subconscious.
Pioneering Writers
Early Modernists
The early phase saw groundbreaking work from figures like Joseph Conrad, whose psychological realism influenced many. Alfred Jarry's absurdist play Ubu Roi predated much of the movement. Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio captured small-town psychology, while James Joyce's Ulysses and T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land became seminal modernist texts.
Mid-Century Innovators
The 1920s and 1930s continued this trajectory with writers like Marcel Proust, William Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, and Luigi Pirandello. Their works explored memory, consciousness, and societal fragmentation with unprecedented depth and formal innovation.
Landmark Works
Foundational Texts
Modernist literature is defined by its experimental forms and thematic depth. Works like Joyce's Ulysses, Eliot's The Waste Land, and Proust's In Search of Lost Time revolutionized narrative and poetic techniques, delving into the complexities of the human psyche and modern experience.
Theatre and Beyond
Beyond novels and poetry, modernism profoundly impacted theatre, with plays like Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot epitomizing the Theatre of the Absurd. The movement's influence extended to film, music, and visual arts, creating a rich tapestry of interconnected artistic innovation.
Interdisciplinary Connections
Visual Arts
Modernist literature shares aesthetic principles with visual arts movements. Cubism's fragmentation, Fauvism's bold colors, and Surrealism's exploration of the subconscious found literary parallels in modernist techniques that broke with traditional representation and explored inner realities.
Music and Dance
Musical innovations like atonality (Schoenberg) and rhythmic experimentation (Stravinsky) echoed the literary avant-garde. Similarly, modern dance pioneers like Isadora Duncan and Martha Graham broke from classical ballet, emphasizing individual expression and natural movement, mirroring literary modernism's focus on subjective experience.
Film
Early cinema, particularly the Soviet Montage movement (Eisenstein, Pudovkin) and German Expressionism (Murnau, Lang), employed innovative editing, subjective perspectives, and thematic depth that aligned with modernist literary concerns, challenging traditional narrative forms.
Enduring Legacy
Post-Modernism and Beyond
While the peak of modernism is often considered to have ended around 1939, its influence persisted. The subsequent postmodern movement reacted to, and built upon, modernist foundations, often by deconstructing modernist ideals or embracing the fragmentation that modernists grappled with.
Continued Relevance
Modernist techniquesโstream of consciousness, fragmented narratives, unreliable narrators, and a focus on subjective experienceโcontinue to inform contemporary literature. The movement's exploration of alienation, societal change, and the search for meaning remains profoundly relevant.
References
Source Material
- Pound, Ezra, Make it New, Essays, London, 1935
- Childs, Peter, Modernism, Routledge, 2008
- Morley, Catherine, Modern American Literature, EDINBURGH University Press, 2012
- Gillies, Mary Ann, Modernist Literature, Edinburgh University Press, 2007
- Yeats, W. B., The Second Coming
- Aylesworth, Gary, Postmodernism, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2015
- Hume, David, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book I.iv, section 6
- Erdinast-Vulcan, Daphne, Joseph Conrad and the Modern Temper, Oxford University Press, 1991
- Peggy Guggenheim Collection website, "The Poet"
- Kleinberg-Levin, David Michael, Wallace Stevens' Poetic Realism: The Only Possible Redemption, 2024
- Gorodeisky, Keren, 19th Century Romantic Aesthetics, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2016
- Richards, I.A., The Philosophy of Rhetoric, 1936
- The Poetry Foundation, "Frost at Midnight"
- Halmi, Nicholas, The Genealogy of the Romantic Symbol, 2007
- Symons, Arthur, The symbolist movement in literature
- Eliot, T. S., The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
- Gooding-Williams, Robert, Nietzsche's Pursuit of Modernism, New German Critique, 1987
- Collinson, Dianรฉ, Fifty Major Philosophers: A Reference Guide
- Williams, Linda R., The Twentieth Century, Bloomsbury, 1992
- Merriam-Webster, Merriam Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature, 1995
- Bossy, Michel-Andrรฉ, Artists, Writers, and Musicians: An Encyclopedia of People Who Changed the World, 2001
- Pratt, William, The Imagist Poem, Modern Poetry in Miniature, 2001
- Eliot, T. S., "Ulysses," Order and Myth, The Dial, 1923
- Le parole e le cose, "Modernismo e poesia italiana del primo novecento", 2012
- Dubnick, Randa K., The Structure of Obscurity: Gertrude Stein, Language, and Cubism, 1984
- Dettmar, J. H., Modernism, The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature, 2006
- Oxford University Press, The Oxford Companion to English Literature
- Greenberg, Clement, Modernism and Postmodernism, Arts, 1980
- Hindrichs, Cheryl, Late Modernism, 1928โ1945: Criticism and Theory, Literature Compass, 2011
- Dickstein, Morris, An Outsider to His Own Life, The New York Times Book Review, 1997
- Foster, John Wilson, The Cambridge Companion to Irish Literature, 2006
- Mellors, Anthony, Late modernist poetics: From Pound to Prynne
- Rauville, Camille de, Littรฉratures francophones de l'ocรฉan Indien, 1990
- Christophe, SOLIOZ, Les esclaves de Bourbon -la mer et la montagne, 2003
- Hutchinson Encyclopedia, Millennium Edition, Helicon 1999
- Arts.gla.ac.uk, "The Theatre Of The Absurd"
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References
References
- I.A. Richards, The Philosophy of Rhetoric, (Oxford University Press: New York and London, 1936). Technically, Richards applies the terms 'vehicle' and 'tenor' to metaphor rather than symbol.
- Robert Gooding-Williams, "Nietzsche's Pursuit of Modernism" New German Critique, No. 41, Special Issue on the Critiques of the Enlightenment. (Spring รขยย Summer, 1987), pp. 95รขยย108.
- The Bloomsbury Guides to English Literature: The Twentieth Century, ed. Linda R. Williams. London: Bloomsbury, 1992, pp. 108รขยย9.
- David Thorburn, MIT, The Great Courses, The Teaching Company, 2007, Masterworks of Early 20th-Century Literature, see p. 12 of guidebook Part I, Accessed August 24, 2013
- Virginia Woolf. "Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown." Collected Essays. Ed. Leonard Woolf. Vol. 1. London: Hogarth, 1966. pages 319รขยย337.
- Bloomsbury Guides to English Literature: The Twentieth Century, ed. Linda R. Williams. London: Bloomsbury, 1992, p.311.
- J. H. Dettmar "Modernism" in The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature ed. by David Scott Kastan. Oxford University Press, 2006.
- "modernism", The Oxford Companion to English Literature. Edited by Dinah Birch. Oxford University Press Inc. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press.
- The Cambridge Companion to Irish Literature, ed. John Wilson Foster. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
- Late modernist poetics: From Pound to Prynne by Anthony Mellors; see also Prynne's publisher, Bloodaxe Books.
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