1. Modernism in the 20th Century

2. Literary Themes and Styles
Doubt, conflict, and strife
Protagonists are often troubled with who they are and their place in the world
Fragmentation of the interior and exterior
The stability of the self, ideologies, and the world in question
Stream of Consciousness
Fluid and shifting narrative presentation of subjectivities
Surrealism
The use of the absurd and contradictory to represent the life of the mind

3. The Dream (The Bed), Frieda Kahlo, 1940

4. Life Reconsidered Colonialism Industrialization Innovation Urbanism
No more “blank spaces” left on the map
Encounters with other civilizations
Industrialization
Shift from agrarian to manufacturing
Labor becomes alienated
Innovation
Improvements in transportation, communication, and healthcare
Urbanism
Population moves from country to city
Wars
Increase conflict and better weapons
Capacity to destroy humanity

5. Egon Schiele, Self-Portrait, 1912

6. The Modern Self: If the world is now entirely known, what is left to know?
Existentialism
The individual—not society or religion—is solely responsible for giving meaning to life and living it “authentically.”
Sartre and Camus
Psychoanalysis
The power of the unconscious (ego, superego, and id), the repressed, and primal drives to understand the self as in conflict with itself and the world.
Freud and Lacan

7. Existentialism Existential Attitude
An individual’s sense of disorientation and confusion in the face of an apparently meaningless or absurd world
“Existence Precedes Essence” (Sartre)
One’s consciousness (subjectivity) creates meaning in the world through action and reflection.
Optimism vs. Absurdism
Candide vs. “The Metamorphosis”

8. Existential Crisis Who am I? & What is life’s purpose?
Realizing that life has no meaning prior to what consciousness (subjectivity) gives it.
Hollowness of social types (stereotypes/categories)
Understanding that life only has meaning through action (agency) and reflection (subjectivity)

10. Kafka’s Metamorphosis (1916)
“One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into ungeheuren Ungeziefer.”

11. ungeheuren Ungeziefer:
enormous bug horrible vermin some sort of monstrous insect monstrous verminous bug gigantic insect gargantuan pest some kind of monstrous vermin