Assignment
🌸Name: Payal chudasama
🌸Sem: 3
🌸Batch: 2019-20
🌸Roll no: 16
🌸Submitted by: smt.Gardi Department of English MKBU
🌸Paper name : The Modernist literature
🌸Course: M.A. English
Topic: Modernism and postmodernism.
🌸 Enrollment no: 2o69108420200005
🌸 Email I'd chudasmapayal1997@gmail.com
☆ Introduction about " modernism " :
Modernism is both a philosophical movement and an art movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, and social organization which reflected the newly emerging industrial world, including features such as urbanization, new technologies, and war. Artists attempted to depart from traditional forms of art, which they considered outdated or obsolete. The poet Ezra Pound's 1934 injunction to "Make it new!" was the touchstone of the movement's approach.
☆ what is modernism?
In literature, visual art, architecture, dance, and music, Modernism was a break with the past and the concurrent search for new forms of expression. Modernism fostered a period of experimentation in the arts from the late 19th to the mid-20th century, particularly in the years following World War I.
☆What did Modernism do? :
All the arts sought an authentic response to the industrialization and urbanization of the late 19th century. In literature, Modernist writers such as Henry James and Virginia Woolf cast off traditional continuity, employing stream-of-consciousness narration instead. Artists such as Édouard Manet broke from inherited notions of perspective and modeling. Architects sought unique forms for new technologies. Choreographers rebelled against both balletic and interpretive traditions, and composers used untried approaches to tonality.
☆ Where is Modernism today?
Scholars suggest that Modernism ended sometime after World War II, between the 1950s and 1960s. There were discernible shifts in all the arts: writers turned to irony and self-awareness; visual artists focused on the process rather than the finished product; postmodern architects used decoration for the sake of decoration; choreographers replaced conventional dance steps with simple movements, including rolling, walking, and skipping; and composers jettisoned such traditional formal qualities as harmony, tempo, and melody.
☆ History of modernism:
Arising out of the rebellious mood at the beginning of the twentieth century, modernism was a radical approach that yearned to revitalize the way modern civilization viewed life, art, politics, and science. This rebellious attitude that flourished between 1900 and 1930 had, as its basis, the rejection of European culture for having become too corrupt, complacent and lethargic, ailing because it was bound by the artificialities of a society that was too preoccupied with image and too scared of change. This dissatisfaction with the moral bankruptcy of everything European led modern thinkers and artists to explore other alternatives, especially primitive cultures. For the Establishment, the result would be cataclysmic; the new emerging culture would undermine tradition and authority in the hopes of transforming contemporary society.
☆ The Forces That Shaped Modernism:
The year 1900 ushered a new era that changed the way that reality was perceived and portrayed. Years later this revolutionary new period would come to be known as modernism and would forever be defined as a time when artists and thinkers rebelled against every conceivable doctrine that was widely accepted by the Establishment, whether in the arts, science, medicine, philosophy, etc. Although modernism would be short-lived, from 1900 to 1930, we are still reeling from its influences sixty-five years later.
How was modernism such a radical departure from what had preceded it in the past? The modernists were militant about distancing themselves from every traditional idea that had been held sacred by Western civilization, and perhaps we can even go so far as to refer to them as intellectual anarchists in their willingness to vandalize anything connected to the established order. In order to better understand this modernist iconoclasm, let's go back in time to explore how and why the human landscape was changing so rapidly.
☆ what is postmodernism? :
Postmodernism is a broad movement that developed in the mid- to late 20th century across philosophy, the arts, architecture, and criticism, marking a departure from modernism. The term has been more generally applied to describe a historical era said to follow after modernity and the tendencies of this era.
Postmodernism is generally defined by an attitude of skepticism, irony, or rejection toward what it describes as the grand narratives and ideologies associated with modernism, often criticizing Enlightenment rationality and focusing on the role of ideology in maintaining political or economic power. Postmodern thinkers frequently describe knowledge claims and value systems as contingent or socially-conditioned, framing them as products of political, historical, or cultural discourses and hierarchies. Common targets of postmodern criticism include universalist ideas of objective reality, morality, truth, human nature, reason, science, language, and social progress. Accordingly, postmodern thought is broadly characterized by tendencies to self-consciousness, self-referentiality, epistemological and moral relativism, pluralism, and irreverence.
☆ What does postmodernism focus
on? :
A general and wide-ranging term which is applied to literature, art, philosophy, architecture, fiction, and cultural and literary criticism, among others. Postmodernism is largely a reaction to the assumed certainty of scientific, or objective, efforts to explain reality. In essence, it stems from a recognition that reality is not simply mirrored in human understanding of it, but rather, is constructed as the mind tries to understand its own particular and personal reality. For this reason, postmodernism is highly skeptical of explanations which claim to be valid for all groups, cultures, traditions, or races, and instead focuses on the relative truths of each person. In the postmodern understanding, interpretation is everything; reality only comes into being through our interpretations of what the world means to us individually. Postmodernism relies on concrete experience over abstract principles, knowing always that the outcome of one's own experience will necessarily be fallible and relative, rather than certain and universal.
Postmodernism is "post" because it is denies the existence of any ultimate principles, and it lacks the optimism of there being a scientific, philosophical, or religious truth which will explain everything for everybody - a characteristic of the so-called "modern" mind. The paradox of the postmodern position is that, in placing all principles under the scrutiny of its skepticism, it must realize that even its own principles are not beyond questioning. As the philosopher Richard Tarnas states, postmodernism "cannot on its own principles ultimately justify itself any more than can the various metaphysical overviews against which the postmodern mind has defined itself."
☆ What do postmodernists believe?
Many postmodernists hold one or more of the following views:
(1) there is no objective reality.
(2) there is no scientific or historical truth (objective truth).
(3) science and technology (and even reason and logic) are not vehicles of human progress but suspect instruments of established power.
(4) reason and logic are not universally valid.
(5) there is no such thing as human nature .
(6) language does not refer to a reality outside itself.
(7) there is no certain knowledge.
(8) no general theory of the natural or social world can be valid or true (all are illegitimate “metanarratives”).
☆ what is different between modernism and postmodernism? :
☆ Some books related to modernism:
《1》"Nightwood" by Djuna Barnes:
This book Published in 1936, Nightwood is a haze of alcohol, glamour, sex, and love in all its desperate, unconventional, and painful forms. It tells the story of the mesmerising Robin Vote, who leaves a trail of cigarette ends and empty bottles through the lives of the other characters as she flies from one party to another, one romance to another. Nora is a woman deeply in love with Robin, and tormented by her lover’s free nature. In spite of their difficulties, they are bound together in a love worthy of greatness.
《2》"Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad :
Published in 1899, this novella marks a turning point into the modernist era. It is a story about a journey up the Congo river and into the heart of Africa as told by the character of Marlow. He recounts his tale to his shipmates aboard the Nellie, which is docked in London. This narrative framing serves two purposes; it links the “darkness” of London to the “darkness” in the heart of Africa, questioning the distinctions between the civilised and the uncivilised, and it creates a story within a story that gives the impression of a journey into the deeper recesses of individual and social psychology. The figure of Kurtz, an ivory trader stationed in Africa.
☆《3》 "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison:
"Invisible Man" is a novel by Ralph Ellison, published by Random House in 1952. It addresses many of the social and intellectual issues faced by the African Americans in the early twentieth century.
☆《4》) "Howards End" by E. M.Forster :
Howards End is a novel by E. M. Forster, first published in 1910, about social conventions, codes of conduct and relationships in turn-of-the-century England. "Howards End" is considered by many to be Forster's masterpiece.
☆《5》 " Farewell to Arms" by Ernest Hemingway:
"A Farewell to Arms" is a novel by Ernest Hemingway set during the Italian campaign of World War I. First published in 1929, it is a first-person account of an American, Frederic Henry, serving as a lieutenant in the ambulance corps of the Italian Army.
☆《6》"Point Counter Point" by Aldous Huxley:
"Point Counter Point" is a novel by Aldous Huxley, first published in 1928. It is Huxley's longest novel, and was notably more complex and serious than his earlier fiction. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Point Counter Point 44th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.
☆Conclusion:
Postmodernism is the end of meta-narratives and absolute truth that modernism had created. No meta-narrative, meta-theory or meta-language exists which could have connected and represented everything. For postmodernists, modernism forcibly creates totality of life causing individual alienation from life.
☆ work citation:
Cahoone, Lawrence E. From Modernism to Postmodernism: An Anthology. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub, 2003.
Chan, Evans. "Postmodernism and Hong Kong Cinema." Postmodern Culture 10.3 (2000): n. pag. Project Muse. Web. 5 June 2008
.
Childs, Peter. Modernism. London: Routledge, 2008.
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