modernism notes

  1. name the era - emphasized powers of the mind, works were steeped in irony, stresses need to think logically
    enlightenment era
  2. Enlightenment works from this semester
    • Swift, "A Modest Proposal"
    • Voltaire, "Candide"
  3. name the era - emphasized Nature & Emotion (opposite of Enlightenment Era)
    Romantic era
  4. Romantic Era works from this semester
    • Goethe's "Faust"
    • Douglass's -Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (classified as an autobiographical documentary)
  5. emphasized detachment of author and scientific thought - nature vs nurture is a common theme
    Realism & Naturalism
  6. Realism & Naturalism Work(s) from this semester
    Machado, "Rod of Justice"
  7. what is Modernism
    authors stressed being new, wanted "new ways of saying" detachment of author
  8. Modernism works from this semester
    • Franz Kafka's "Metamorphosis"
    • Tadeusz Borowski's - "This Way for the Gas"
    • Nawal El Saadawi 's "In Camera"
  9. Authors stress being new; usually claim
    to have achieved a more accurate representation for reality and a
    better understanding of human condition
    Modernism
  10. Modernism --Influences on early writers
    • 1. WWI
    • 2. Great Depression
    • 3. WWII
    • 4. Overthrow of monarchies
    • 5. Technological advancement
    • 6. Racism
    • 7. Sexism
  11. Modernism literary responses
    • 1. Stereotypes challenged; cultural parochialism (belief that there is only one correct view of the world) is attacked
    • 2. Romantic notions attacked
    • 3. Authority challenged -- women elevated, individual elevated above society, human values are questioned
  12. Modernism: Scientific Rationalism
    • Beliefs:
    • 1. we would soon master all secrets of universe
    • 2. world is machine (Enlightenment idea) whose parts could be named and seen to funciton
  13. Modernism: Scientific Rationalism -- Nietzsche
    • Philosophic reactions:
    • German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (d. 1900) --focused on
    • individual, not society, and admired only superhero who refused to be
    • bound by prevailing socil paradigms of nationalism, christianity, faith
    • in science, loyalty to the state, or bourgeois civilized comfort
  14. Modernism: Scientific Rationalism --Freud
    • Philosophic Reactions:
    • Sigmund Freud (d. 1939)
    • Focused on the way everyday, rational behavior is shaped by unconscious impulses and hidden motivations
  15. Modernism: Scientific Rationalism -- Jung
    • Philosophic Reactions:
    • Carl Gustave Jung (d. 1961)
    • Focused on common experience, the collective unconscious that all
    • humanity shared -- a buried level of universal experience tapped by
    • myth, religion, and art
  16. Modernism: Scientific Rationalism -- Literary Reactions
    Exploits patterns of language to the limit of comprehensibility
  17. Modernism: Scientific Rationalism -- Literary Reactions
    • Words and word-fragments combine to
    • stress patterns of surface relationships --- Game theory: leads to a a
    • view of all language as an endless networking of associations;
    • communication and value judgment are impossible; leads to rereading
    • because of many dimensions of meaning
  18. Modernism: Scientific Rationalism -- Literary Reactions
    • Theater of the Absurd; humans are
    • thrown into the world without any understanding of their fate, into
    • absurd conditions -- a kind of existentialism
  19. Modernism: Embraces other "isms" of the century
    • By definition refers to group of
    • Anglo-American writers who favored clear, precise images and common
    • speech and thought of the work as an art object produced by consummate
    • craft rather than as a statement of emotion
  20. Modernism: Embraces other "isms" of the century
    • An attempt to use language in a new
    • way, to reconstruct world of art much as philosophers and scientists had
    • redefined the world in their own disciplines
  21. Modernism: Embraces other "isms" of the century
    Shifting and contradictory appearances to suggest shifting and uncertain nature of reality
  22. Modernism: Embraces other "isms" of the century
    • Broke up the logically developing plot
    • typical of the 19th century novel and offered unexpected connections or
    • sudden changes of perspective
  23. Modernism: Embraces other "isms" of the century
    Drew attention to style instead of trying to make it transparent
  24. Modernism: Embraces other "isms" of the century
    Blended fantasy with reality
  25. Modernism: Embraces other "isms" of the century
    Raised age-old questions of human identity in terms of contemporary philosophy and psychology
  26. Modernism: Varieties

    Expressionism
    • refuses the direct representation of
    • reality or even impressions of it in favor of expression of an inner
    • vision, emotion, or spiritual reality: subordinates conventional style
    • to let emotion dictate the structure of the work (results in broken
    • syntax, distorted imagery)
  27. Modernism: Varieties

    dadaism
    • Dadaism: a disgust for traditional
    • middle-class values of patriotism, religion, morality, and rationalism;
    • brings about a revolution of the mind, attacks mind and emotions to
    • liberate the creative imagination
  28. Modernism: Varieties

    Surrealism:
    • a means of expressing the actual
    • functioning of thought, the total recuperation of our psychic force by a
    • descent into ourselves; encourages automatic writing (free writing) and
    • creation of startling images to show relationships not to be discovered
    • by the logical mind
  29. Like writers of early 20th century, later writers propose their own even more "accurate" representations of reality, exploit different subject matter, reach out to new audiences and explore different ways of relating to their readers
    Modernism: Reality
  30. Great range of styles: from fragmented visions of society, from magical realism to medically accurate depictions of death
    Modernism: Reality
  31. Some writers push to the limits the modernist refusal of positivism as they create works that are structures of ambiguity
    1. Some attempt to achieve a "truer" reality by incorporating actual
    documents such as personal letters, newspaper clippings, comments, and
    drawings in margin
    2. Reality termed "jagged" (Ezra pound) and needs to be represented with all its rough edges
    Modernism: Reality
  32. General aim is to avoid creating any sense of completeness or any artificially fixed center in which to anchor our understanding
    Postmodernism
  33. Anonymous character viewpoint
    Postmodernism
  34. Individual characters do not develop a
    consistent psychological identity (instead interact in a meaningless
    void, reacting moment by moment without regard to past or future)
    Postmodernism
  35. Burdens reader to find meaning in full awareness of reading process
    Postmodernism
  36. Works do not provide aesthetic
    completion suggested by term "literature" and thus are often called
    "anti-literature", completion regarded as artificial
    Postmodernism
  37. Awareness of cultural heterogeneity as
    revealed in multicultural themes and social problems that do not have a
    single right answer
    Postmodernism
  38. Pluralism
    male and female authors from various backgrounds, social situations, and ethnicities
Author
mopotter
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218075
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modernism notes
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modernism
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