Modernism Sara Bufo
Modernism (1890-1930) Imagism Aestethics Symbolism
No framework of reference Darwin Relativity Man decentered No framework of reference Darwin Crisis traditional values No omniscient narrator Eclipse of the narrator Shifting point of view experimentation Focus on form Plot reduced Focus on feelings Subjectivity Internal monologue Personal search, quest Man isolated Unconscious Flux of thought Mythical method Objective correlative Demanding on the reader Elite movement Epiphany
Society and social structure Search for order Search for equilibrium Center of foundation Social roles Acceptance obligations/expectations Roles dichotomized “me” dominates “I”
Subjectivity/ Agency Discourse Man balanced egoism/altruism Active form: alienation, despair, opposition Passive form: homeostasis Discourse Neutral Signifier + signified = understanding Word choice + order of word = meaning
Knowledge Space/Time Linear, deductive Truth based on logos Absolute postulates Space/Time Newtonian mechanics/ Cartesian system Whole number-dimension space Reversible time
Causality Social change Highly predictable Effects proportional and linear Social change Linear affair Evolutionary theory
Modernist writers Virginia Woolf James Joyce T. S. Eliot Ezra Pound Mrs Dalloway James Joyce Dubliners Ulysses T. S. Eliot The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock The Waste Land Four Quartets Finnegans Wake Ezra Pound
Lexicon Epiphany: sudden awareness, spiritual or even practical breakthrough Mythical method: use of the myth in manipulating a continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity Objective correlative: a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events formula of a particular emotion