Features of literary Modernism

The Modernist period in English Literature occupied the years from shortly after the
beginning of the 20th century. The Modernist period was marked by a strong and international
break with tradition. This break includes a strong reaction against established religious, political
and social views. Moreover, the thoughts that influenced this form of literature were influenced
by Sigmund Freud and Charles Darwin. Modernist literature came into its own due to increasing
industrialization and globalization. New technology and the horrifying events of both world wars
made many people question the future of humanity: what was becoming of the world? Writers
reacted to this question by turning toward Modernist sentiment. In other words, Modernism
seeks to find new forms of expression and rejects traditional or accepted ideas.

The Main Characteristics of Modern Literature:

The characteristics of the Modern Literature can be categorized into Individualism,
Experimentation, Symbolism, Absurdity and Formalism.

1-Individualism:
In Modern Literature, the individual is more interesting than society. The Modern writers
presented the world or society as a challenge to the integrity of their characters. Ernest
Hemingway is especially remembered for vivid characters who accepted their circumstances at
free value.

2-Experimentation
Modernist writers broke free of old forms and techniques. Poets abandoned traditional
rhyme schemes and wrote in free verse. Novelists defied all expectations. Writers mixed images
from the past with modern languages and themes, creating a collage of styles. The inner
workings of consciousness were a common subject for modernists. This preoccupation led to a
form of narration called stream of consciousness. Authors James Joyce and Virginia Woolf,
along with poets T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, are well known for their experimental Modernist
works.

3-Absurdity
The carnage of two World Wars profoundly affected writers of the period. Several great
English poets died or were wounded in WWI. For many writers, the world was becoming a more
absurd place every day. Modernist authors depicted this absurdity in their works.

4-Symbolism
The Modernist writers infused objects, people, places and events with significant
meanings. The idea of a poem as a riddle to be cracked had its beginnings in the Modernist
period. Symbolism was not a new concept in literature, but the Modernists' particular use of
symbols was an innovation. They left much more to the reader's imagination than earlier writers.

5-Formalism
Writers of the Modernist period saw literature more as a craft than a flowering of
creativity. The idea of literature as craft fed the Modernists' desire for creativity and originality.
Modernist poetry often includes foreign languages, dense vocabulary and invented words.

Modernism and the structure of the literary works:

1-chracter:
A disappearance of character summary. This is clear in Dickens' literary works such as Great
Expectations.

2-plot:
Most of the plots of the Modern literature are different from that of the ancient works. The
Modernists did not use plots with sudden climactic turning points and clear resolutions. Instead
they used plots with open unresolved endings.

3-Style:
In their literary works, The Modernist writers adapted the stream of conscious technique.
Virginia Woolf and James Joyce are regarded as the master of using this literary technique in
writing.
Finally, Modernism also abandoned one of the most fundamental types of character: the
hero. What constitutes heroism has always aroused debate. The typical protagonist of modernism
having lost faith in society, religion and the surrounding environment, seem also to have lost any
claim to heroic action.
 Postmodern literature
Postmodern literature is literature characterized by reliance on narrative techniques such as
fragmentation, paradox, and the unreliable narrator; and often is (though not exclusively) defined
as a style or a trend which emerged in the post–World War II era. Postmodern works are seen as
a response against dogmatic following of Enlightenment thinking and Modernist approaches to
literature.
Postmodern literature, like postmodernism as a whole, tends to resist definition or classification
as a "movement". Indeed, the convergence of postmodern literature with various modes of
critical theory, particularly reader-response and deconstructionist approaches, and the
subversions of the implicit contract between author, text and reader by which its works are often
characterised, have led to pre-modern fictions such as Cervantes' Don Quixote (1605, 1615) and
Laurence Sterne's eighteenth-century satire Tristram Shandy being retrospectively considered by
some as early examples of postmodern literature.
postmodern writers are seen as reacting against the precepts of modernism, and they often
operate as literary "bricoleurs", parodying forms and styles associated with modernist (and other)
writers and artists. Postmodern works also tend to celebrate chance over craft, and further
employ metafiction to undermine the text's authority or authenticity. Another characteristic of
postmodern literature is the questioning of distinctions between high and low culture through the
use of pastiche, the combination of subjects and genres not previously deemed fit for literature.

Comparisons with modernist literature

Both modern and postmodern literature represent a break from 19th century realism. In character
development, both modern and postmodern literature explore subjectivism, turning from external
reality to examine inner states of consciousness, in many cases drawing on modernist examples
in the "stream of consciousness" styles of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, or explorative poems
like The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot. In addition, both modern and postmodern literature explore
fragmentariness in narrative- and character-construction. The Waste Land is often cited as a
means of distinguishing modern and postmodern literature. The poem is fragmentary and
employs pastiche like much postmodern literature, but the speaker in The Waste Land says,
"these fragments I have shored against my ruins". Modernist literature sees fragmentation and
extreme subjectivity as an existential crisis, or Freudian internal conflict, a problem that must be
solved, and the artist is often cited as the one to solve it. Postmodernists, however, often
demonstrate that this chaos is insurmountable; the artist is impotent, and the only recourse
against "ruin" is to play within the chaos. Playfulness is present in many modernist works
(Joyce's Finnegans Wake or Virginia Woolf's Orlando, for example) and they may seem very
similar to postmodern works, but with postmodernism playfulness becomes central and the
actual achievement of order and meaning becomes unlikely. Gertrude Stein's playful experiment
with metafiction and genre in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933) has been interpreted
as postmodern.

Shift to postmodernism
As with all stylistic eras, no definite dates exist for the rise and fall of postmodernism's
popularity. 1941, the year in which Irish novelist James Joyce and English novelist Virginia
Woolf both died, is sometimes used as a rough boundary for postmodernism's start.
The prefix "post", however, does not necessarily imply a new era. Rather, it could also indicate a
reaction against modernism in the wake of the Second World War (with its disrespect for human
rights, just confirmed in the Geneva Convention, through the rape of Nanking, the Bataan Death
March, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Holocaust, the bombing of
Dresden, the fire-bombing of Tokyo, and Japanese American internment). It could also imply a
reaction to significant post-war events: the beginning of the Cold War, the Civil Rights
Movement, postcolonialism (Postcolonial literature), and the rise of the personal computer
(Cyberpunk fiction and Hypertext fiction).
Some further argue that the beginning of postmodern literature could be marked by significant
publications or literary events. For example, some mark the beginning of postmodernism with
the first publication of John Hawkes' The Cannibal in 1949.