The Twentieth Century

1. The Twentieth Century Modernism

2. Social Background • The sun never set • Social problems: unemployment, sharp contrast between the working class and the middle class and widespread strikes • The Great Depression (1929)

3. Modernism • Century of “isms: • Expressionism • Dadaism • Surrealism • Futurism • Imagism • Stream of consciousness These “isms” explore different ways of expressing the REALITY of the world.

4. Dada

5. surrealism

6. cubism • symbolism • fauvism ….the list goes on and on

7. Modernism

8. Modernism: a movement in art, literature, music and architecture characterized by experimentation with form.Modernism spans 1900--1940.

9. the Modernist writers • discontinuity or fragmentation in the narrative • stream of consciousness as a narrative style • a highly subjective view of reality • a complex web of symbols • reliance on myth • a mythic, rather than temporal, view of history

10. Modernism • Sigmund Freud

11. Psychoanalysis • a highly influential method of treating mental disorders, shaped by psychoanalytic theory, which emphasizes unconscious mental processes

12. Novelists • Joseph Conrad --Heart of Darkness --Lord Jim • E. M. Foster -- A Room with a View --Howard’s End -- A Passage to India • James Joyce --Dubliners -- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man -- Ulysses -- Finnegans Wake

13. Virginia Woolf --Mrs. Dalloway -- To the Lighthouse -- The Waves • D.H. Lawrence -- Lady Chatterley’s Lover -- Sons and Lovers -- The Rainbow -- Women in Love

14. Modernist Literature “Things fall apart,The centre cannot hold,Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.” --Yeats, “TheSecond Coming”

15. stream of consciousness • The (re)presentation of inner (psychological) reality, including the 'flow' of experience, through devices such as stream of consciousness. • The use of such structural approaches to experience as psychoanalysis, myth, the symbolic apprehension and comprehension of reality.

16. Stream of Consciousness Definition “……to describe the unbroken flow of thought and awareness in the waking mind; it has since been adopted to describe a narrative method in modern fiction. Long passages of introspection, describing in some detail what passes through a character’s mind,…” “… the continuous flow of a character’s mental process, in which sense perceptions mingle with conscious and half-conscious thoughts, memories, expectations, feelings, and random associations. “

17. T.S. Eliot • 1888-1965 • Born in St. Louis, attended Harvard, studied Oxford and Sorbonne • Went to England 1914, returned 1932 • Became a British citizen

18. Ideas of literature • Developed idea of literary canon • Emphasis on tradition in creative writing and criticism • Used mythology to provide structure for modern issues addressed in his works • Discovered and revived interest in John Donne et al. • Named them “metaphysical” poets

19. Prufrock • Monologue • Poetic speaker • Shy with women • Building up his courage • Imagery • Zoomorphism • Repetition • Allusion

20. Poets • William Butler Yeats • Wystan Hugh Auden

21. Dramatist • Samuel Barclay Beckett • Theatre of the Absurd • Waiting for Godot