The Modern Period (feb 24, 1914 – oct 2, 1945)
Description:
it was the terrifying power of new advancies which made the Great War so destructive, and eventually led to another war, ending the progression from steam power to nuclear power and generating questions about the notion of progress, such as those voiced by Bertrand Russell
whole range of modernist movements revolutionizing the art scene: post-impressionism, futurism, imagism, cubism, dadaism, vorticism, surrealism...
1930's, more realism, more conventional modes of writing seemed best fitted to the 'literature of commitment' the decade gave rise to
WHAT IS MODERNISM?
-rejection of Victorian values and of faith in reason and progress
-response to mass destruction of WW1: not in descriptions but translated into violence, conflicts and fractured structures
-rejection of art as representational (different planes of cubism, shifting POV, stream of consciousness)
-rejection of art conveying the writer's emotion
-personality appeared as very opposite to Dickens's humours (thanks to Freud)
-difficulty of apprehending the complexity and uncertainty of the world through obscurity and ambiguity (novels without final interpretation)
-form carried meaning better than a description
Added to timeline:
British Literature
Date: