Modern Literature (1900 – 1965)

• Modern Literature


  • late 19th and early 20th centuries
  • individualism, experimentation, and complexities of human experience
  • broke away from conventional narrative structures and explored themes of alienation, fragmentation, and the inner workings of the human mind
• Many events happened and have left a tremendous impact on the lives of the people

  Start of the 20th century
• Literary trends of Modernism

  • Individualism
  • Experimentation
  • Populism
• In contrast to the Romantic worldview


  The Modernist no longer dwells on themes about Nature, Self, or the tenets of history
• Instead of progress and growth

  The Modern Intelligentsia sees decay and a growing alienation of the individual
• The machinery of modern society


  Impersonal, capitalist, and antagonistic to the artistic impulse
• War


  Had a great deal of influence on such ways of approaching the world
• Two World wars in the span of a generation effectively shell-shocked all of Western civilization