The 20 th Century and After

1. The 20th Century and After 1901-current time

2. TimeLine • 1914 World War I • 1922 James Joyce’s Ulysses; T.S. Elliot’s “The Waste Land” • 1929 Stock Market crash and Great Depression • 1939 -1945 World War II • 1947 India and Pakistan become independent • 1953 Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot • 1957-62 Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago become independent • 1991 Collapse of Soviet Union • 2001 Destruction of World Trade Center

3. Social Sciences • New concepts radically changing human identity • Sigmund Freud Interpretation of Dreams – psychology (psychoanalysis) • Sir James Frazer Golden Bough – anthropology (culture, religion, myth) • Friedrich Nietzsche – philosophy and challenges to religious doctrine

4. Science and Technology • Max Planck’s quantum theory • Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity • Wireless communication across Atlantic 1901 • Wright brothers’ airplane 1903 • Henry Ford and the Model T 1913 • Atomic Energy and Bomb 1945 • Moon Landing 1969 • Internet 1969 • Personal Computers 1974-75

5. Women’s Rights • 1882 Woman’s Property Act • Late 1800’s Women allowed in various universities • Suffragettes late 1800’s early 1900’s • 1918 Women 30 and over could vote • 1928 Women 21 and over could vote

6. Problems of Empire • 1899 -1902 Anglo-Boer war and protests • 1907 Canada, Australia, and New Zealand given dominion status • 1914 -1918 World War I: at the start of the war about 25% of the earth under British control • 1921-1922 Irish free state • Increasing calls for self rule in Indian and Africa “swaraj” • 1939 -1945 World War II and loss of empire • 1947 India and Pakistan win independence • 1957-62 Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago become independent • 1950s and beyond - reverse colonization and shifting identity • Continuing issues with IRA

7. Modernism Review From a literary perspective, the main characteristics of modernism include: 1. an emphasis on impressionism and subjectivity in writing (and in visual arts as well); an emphasis on HOW seeing (or reading or perception itself) takes place, rather than on WHAT is perceived. An example of this would be stream-of-consciousness writing. 2. a movement away from the apparent objectivity provided by omniscient third-person narrators, fixed narrative points of view, and clear-cut moral positions. Joyces multiply-narrated stories are an example of this aspect of modernism. 3. a blurring of distinctions between genres, so that poetry seems more documentary (as in T.S. Eliot or eecummings) and prose seems more poetic (as in Woolf or Joyce). 4. an emphasis on fragmented forms, discontinuous narratives, and random-seeming collages of different materials.

8. Modernism Review Cont. From a literary perspective, the main characteristics of modernism include: 5. a tendency toward reflexivity, or self-consciousness, about the production of the work of art, so that each piece calls attention to its own status as a production, as something constructed and consumed in particular ways. 6. a rejection of elaborate formal aesthetics in favor of minimalist designs (as in the poetry of Philip Larkin) and a rejection, in large part, of formal aesthetic theories, in favor of spontaneity and discovery in creation. 7. A rejection of the distinction between "high" and "low" or popular culture, both in choice of materials used to produce art and in methods of displaying, distributing, and consuming art.

9. Modernism versus Post-Modernism Postmodernism follows most of the conventions of modern art. Postmodern art (and thought) favors reflexivity and self-consciousness, fragmentation and discontinuity (especially in narrative structures), ambiguity, simultaneity, and an emphasis on the destructured, decentered, dehumanized subject. But--while postmodernism seems very much like modernism in these ways, it differs from modernism in its attitude toward a lot of these trends. Modernisn see fragmentation, ambiguity, and a destructured, dehumanized subject as tragic. Many modernist works try to uphold the idea that works of art can provide the unity, coherence, and meaning which has been lost in most of modern life. Postmodernism, in contrast, doesn't lament the idea of fragmentation, provisionality, or incoherence, but rather celebrates that. The world is meaningless? Let's not pretend that art can make meaning then, let's just play with nonsense.