212- ] English Literature

212- ] English Literature

 Modern Period in English Literature

The 20th century began with both great optimism and some fear because it was the century closest to the start of a new millennium. A new era for humankind had begun, as believed by many. The literary movement known as the modern period, which existed from the late nineteenth century to around the middle of the twentieth, comprised a number of developing writing styles that had an impact on the development of literature.

Literary modernism gave authors more freedom to experiment with their modes of expression than in the past. The experiences and feelings of the person are frequently highlighted in the free-flowing inner dialogues and non-linear storylines seen in modernist works. Writers of modern literature include W.B. Yeats, Joseph Conrad, Samuel Beckett, D.H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, and William Carlos Williams.

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Introduction to the Modern Period

The modern period in English literature begins with the 20th century and continues till 1965. The period saw an abrupt break away from the old ways of interacting with the world. In all the previous periods experimentation and individualism were highly discouraged but With the onset of the modern period, both these things became virtues. There were many cultural shocks with the beginning of modernism. The blow of the modern age was World War 1 and 2. These wars began in the year 1914 and lasted till 1919 and 1939 to 1945 respectively. The aftermath of the world wars was traumatic for everyone. The horror of the World War 1 was evident in the face of every citizen. The feeling of uncertainty was spread and no one knew where the world was heading into.

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There are five traits of modernist literature.

Here are a few elements that modernist literature has in common.

The process of experimentation: Modernist literature used a variety of innovative writing strategies that defied accepted principles of narrative structure. 

1-The use of mixed images and themes, absurdity, nonlinear tales, and stream of consciousness—a free-flowing internal monologue—are a few of these strategies.

2. Individualism: Instead of emphasizing society as a whole, modernist literature frequently concentrates on the individual. Stories follow characters as they adjust to a changing environment, usually coping with challenging situations and issues.

3. Different points of view: To highlight the subjectivity of each character and give the reader a range of points of view that might be taken into consideration, many modernist writers wrote in the first person with several characters.

4. Open verse: In place of the conventional poetic form, many modernist poets chose free verse, which lacks a recurring rhyme scheme, metrical framework, or musical rhythm.

5. Creative techniques: Many modernist authors use literary techniques like symbolism and imagery to make their writing easier to understand and to build a better bond with the reader.

Key Points to Remember About the Modern Period

Advancement of social science and natural science in the latter half of the 19th century and early decades of the 20th century. Gains in material wealth with the rapid development and industrialization. The difference between aristocrats and clergy increased more.

English literature of the modern age started with the initiation of the 20th century. The prominent feature of the literature during the modern age was that it opposed the general attitude towards life as shown in Victorian literature. Understanding about modern period can be complex at times. However, as a solution, you can hire someone to take your online class regarding the same. Additional guidance will make your learning experience smooth.

People started to regard the Victorian age as a hypocritical age, having superficial and mean ideals. The hypocrisy of the Victorian period generated a rebellious attitude in the writers of modern literature. Things that were considered beautiful and honourable during the Victorian age were considered ugly by the writers of the modern period. Sense of questioning was absent in the minds of the people from the Victorian age.

During Victorian times, people adhered to the voice of the people who were in power, they accepted the rules made by the church. People started to accept the law without questioning them. But the generation came after critical thinking, they raised questions against the decisions produced by supreme authorities. Writers of the modern age refuted the ideas and beliefs of the previous era.

The modern age helped in replacing the simple belief of the Victorians with modern man’s desire to probe. George Bernard Shaw attacked the old superstitious religious beliefs as well as the superstitions of science. He was the one who pioneered the interrogative habits in the middle of modern people. Shaw openly challenged the voice of those who were ruling the country, and religious authority. He provoked the people to come up with questions about morality and religion.

 List of modernist writers

Literary modernism has its origins in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, mainly in Europe and North America. Modernism is characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional styles of poetry and prose. Modernists experimented with literary form and expression, adhering to Ezra Pound's maxim to "Make it new".[1] The modernist literary movement was driven by a conscious desire to overturn traditional modes of representation and express the new sensibilities of their time.[2] It is debatable when the modernist literary movement began, though some have chosen 1910 as roughly marking the beginning and quote novelist Virginia Woolf, who declared that human nature underwent a fundamental change "on or about December 1910."[3] But modernism was already stirring by 1899, with works such as Joseph Conrad's (1857–1924) Heart of Darkness, while Alfred Jarry's (1873–1907) absurdist play, Ubu Roi appeared even earlier, in 1896. Knut Hamsun's (1859–1952) Hunger (1890) is a groundbreaking modernist novel and Mysteries (1892) pioneers modernist stream of consciousness method.

When modernism ends is debatable. Though The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature sees Modernism ending by c.1939,[4] with regard to British and American literature, "When (if) Modernism petered out and postmodernism began has been contested almost as hotly as when the transition from Victorianism to Modernism occurred".[5] Clement Greenberg sees Modernism ending in the 1930s, with the exception of the visual and performing arts.[6] In fact many literary modernists lived into the 1950s and 1960s, though generally speaking they were no longer producing major works. The term late modernism is also sometimes applied to modernist works published after 1930.[7] Among modernists (or late modernists) still publishing after 1945 were Wallace Stevens, Gottfried Benn, T. S. Eliot, Anna Akhmatova, William Faulkner, Dorothy Richardson, John Cowper Powys, and Ezra Pound. Basil Bunting, born in 1901, published his most important modernist poem Briggflatts in 1965. In addition Hermann Broch's The Death of Virgil was published in 1945 and Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus in 1947. Samuel Beckett, who died in 1989, has been described as a "later modernist". Beckett is a writer with roots in the expressionist tradition of modernism, who produced works from the 1930s until the 1980s, including Molloy (1951), En attendant Godot (1953), Happy Days (1961), Rockaby (1981). The poets Charles Olson (1910-1970) and J. H. Prynne (1936- ) are, amongst other writing in the second half of the 20th century, who have been described as late modernists.

This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.

The following is a list of significant worldwide modernist writers:

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) , Jorge Amado (1912–2001) , Mário de ndrade (1893–1945) , Oswald de Andrade (1890–1954) , Gabriele d'Annunzio (1863–1938) , Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918) , W. H. Auden (1907–1973) , Djuna Barnes (1892–1982)*, Samuel Beckett (1906–1989), Andrei Bely (1880–1934)

Gottfried Benn (1886–1956), Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979), Alexander Blok (1880–1921), Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986), Menno ter Braak (1902–40)

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956), André Breton (1896–1966), Hermann Broch (1886–1951), Basil Bunting (1900–1985), Ivan Cankar (1876–1918), Karel Čapek (1890–1938), Constantine P. Cavafy (1863–1933), Blaise Cendrars (1887–1961), Inger Christensen (1935-2009), Joseph Conrad (1857–1924)

Hart Crane (1899–1932), E. E. Cummings (1894–1962), Rubén Darío (1867–1916) , Alfred Döblin (1878–1957) , Leonid Dobychin (1894–1936 [?]) , John Dos Passos (1896-1970) , Carlos Drummond de Andrade (1902–1987) , Gunnar Ekelöf (1907–1968) , T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) , Ralph W. Ellison (1914–1994) , Forough Farrokhzad (1934-1967) , William Faulkner (1897–1962)

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) , E. M. Forster (1879–1971) , Robert Frost (1874–1963) , Carlo Emilio Gadda (1893–1973) , André Gide (1869–1951)

Witold Gombrowicz (1904-1969) , Maxim Gorky (1868–1936) (later works)

H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) (1886–1961) , Knut Hamsun (1859–1952) , Jaroslav Hašek (1883–1923) , Sadegh Hedayat (1903-1951) , Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) , Hermann Hesse (1877-1962) , Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874–1929)

Max Jacob (1876–1944) , David Jones (1895–1974) , James Joyce (1882–1941)[10] , Franz Kafka (1883–1924) , Georg Kaiser (1878–1945) , Daniil Kharms (1905–1942) , Miroslav Krleža (1893–1981) , D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) , Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957) , Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) , Federico García Lorca (1898–1936) , Robert Lowell (1917–1977) m Mina Loy (1882–1966) , Leopoldo Lugones (1874–1938) , Artur Lundkvist (1906–1991)

Hugh MacDiarmid (1892–1978) , Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839–1908), Antonio Machado Ruiz (1875–1939), Osip Mandelstam (1891–1938)

Thomas Mann (1875–1955) , Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923), Harry Martinson (1904–1978) , Eugenio Montale (1896–1981), Marianne Moore (1887–1972) , Robert Musil (1880–1942) , Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973), Yone Noguchi (1875–1947) , Eugene O'Neill (1888–1953) , George Orwell (1903–1950) , Aldo Palazzeschi (1885–1974)

Boris Pasternak (1890–1960) , Ramón Pérez de Ayala (1880–1962) , Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) , Luigi Pirandello (1867–1936) , Andrei Platonov (1899–1951), Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980) , Ezra Pound (1885–1972), Anthony Powell (1905-2000) , John Cowper Powys (1872–1963) , Marcel Proust (1871–1922) , Aleksey Remizov (1877–1957), Jean Rhys (1890-1979)

Dorothy Richardson (1873–1957), Klaus Rifbjerg (1931–2015),Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926),Mário de Sá-Carneiro (1890–1916),Peter Seeberg (1925–1999),Victor Serge (1890–1947),Gertrude Stein (1874–1946),John Steinbeck (1902–1968),Wallace Stevens (1875–1955),Italo Svevo (1861–1928),Edith Södergran (1892–1923),Villy Sørensen (1929-2001),Dylan Thomas (1914–1953),Ernst Toller (1893–1939) ,Federigo Tozzi (1883–1920),Georg Trakl (1887–1914) ,Konstantin Vaginov (1899–1934) ,Paul Valéry (1871–1945)

Alexander Vvedensky (1904–1941) ,Robert Walser (1878–1956),Frank Wedekind (1864–1918),Nathanael West (1903–1940),William Carlos Williams (1883–1963),Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) ,Lu Xun (1881–1936),W. B. Yeats (1865–1939),Yevgeny Zamyatin (1884–1937)